


#pride

by Quinara



Category: EastEnders
Genre: M/M, Non-Chronological
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-18
Updated: 2016-08-25
Packaged: 2018-08-09 15:09:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 38,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7806685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quinara/pseuds/Quinara
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Paul doesn't die, obviously.  This is a slightly meandering look at what happens next, gathering a plot from the drama to do with his mum.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Ben

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally something of a fix-it fic, but then it became something else. It wasn't long into the original aftermath that I went on holiday for a couple of weeks, so I had to catch up with a lot when I came back, and, while I don't use much what happened at the end of July/start of August, it ended up not feeling right to open the story with the morning after the night before. As a result, the fic is primarily set in the first two weeks of August, looking backwards. For some reason, I didn't do the flashbacks in an entirely flashbacky way, but it should be clear when things are happening. Ben also catches us up a bit with a dream in the first chapter.
> 
> There will be seven chapters in total, all of which are currently drafted (because I like to finish a draft before I start posting). At the moment the doc stands at 35k-ish words, and I'm planning to post all the parts over the course of the coming week (though I am away at the weekend). Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy!!
> 
> PS. For some reason, I have enjoyed the challenge of trying to make this like it would be if it aired on the show, which means taking out the product placement. On some things, like biscuits, I think the brand names are practically generic anyway, so have used them generically, but we may see the return of everyone's favourite British social networking site, MateGate, and a new pal for it that I have made up.

It was 5.25am, and Ben was outside the Cokers’ flat, freezing his face off. It was supposed to be August, but that didn’t seem to be bothering the weather. He’d cut himself with his razor, and it still stung every time he poked the wound with a finger, which was more often than he should have been poking it because he was convinced Paul was going to laugh. It was funny; two weeks ago half of him had been scratched up a whole lot worse and yet this patch on his jaw, he was certain, hurt a lot more than that all had.

Of course, he still had the bruise around his lip that made him look lopsided. It was only just turning yellow. The rest of him was scabs, which didn’t hurt unless he caught them.

The road was empty, this time in the morning, but that was why it was now that Paul had asked him by. Ben hadn’t seen him all week, because – well, because Pam had gone back to taking pleasure in making his life a misery – and so here Ben was, on his own and waiting. He’d watched Pam leave not long before, heading off to the wholesaler’s a little late but otherwise on schedule, and then he’d come out of hiding.

At this time in the morning, the street cleaners were still to come round, so the debris from yesterday’s market trade was still in the gutters. Looking around his shoes, at the gutter, Ben could count up the rind of some kid’s satsuma, an old bag of crisps, one daisy head (or whatever it was) and a dead bottle of coke, alongside all the bin bits that had once been something, but weren’t anymore. Everything looked damp, for some reason; it hadn’t rained.

Staring at the rubbish reminded him of waking up in the midst of it, the rumble of the bin lorries just a street away and the ants crawling across him. It had been about this time he'd woken up, that morning, his head full of fog, something like pain in his hands and his arms and his legs; a feeling like he wasn’t in his body. And Paul – not there.

Had it only been a couple of weeks? Ben wasn’t sure he could remember what it felt like, to be the person he’d been before. He’d got used to the new glasses he was wearing, though the prescription wasn’t right and they gave him a headache after a day of working on engines. He remembered his old ones made him look better; less like an egg – but if he wanted to get new ones he was going to want to get the lenses thinned, and that was more money than he had at the moment.

Other things were different too. Mostly, he didn’t know what to do with himself. In another life he was sure he would have been angry about what had happened to him and Paul, swearing revenge and storming the streets. As it was, outside of a couple of moments’ hate, he found he didn’t know how he felt. Thinking of himself lying in that alley, the morning after – thinking of Paul getting delivered to hospital by some random’s tip-off, unconscious and alone and _pale_ , like the scum had stolen that from him as well – Ben got this ache inside him that wasn’t entirely anger anymore. This August morning, thinking about it again, he just felt tired, and cold, and worn out.

_SCCRRRTTTTT_

Above Ben’s head, then, there was the sound of a window opening, the rising sash scraping out enough noise to startle the nearby birds.

Ben looked up, as jumpy as they were. After a couple of moments – a pause longer than it should have been – Paul’s head appeared, and there was a smile on his face that showed his teeth. Of course there was also a bruise that took up half his jaw, but who didn’t have one of those these days? Whatever else, he was smiling and his hair was tied back and he had his sleeping t-shirt on; it seemed rude for Ben not to smile up at him. “All right?” Paul called down, in something just above a whisper.

Ben nodded, pressing a finger to his shaving wound again, quickly. “All right?” he called back up.

It was going to be all right, wasn’t it? He’d done his shopping the night before, taken the bus to the CosMart MegaMart on the other side of the borough and found Paul a cheap stand-in pay-as-you-go mobile. It wasn’t going to hold him forever, but it was all in Ben’s name, so he could hardly have got him one with a proper contract. That would have been dead creepy; the sort of thing one of Roxy’s boyfriends would have done.

At the same time, it had seemed a bit sad, so he’d ended up buying this completely unnecessary cuddly penguin as well. He was going to blame the concussion.

Paul was shrugging, anyway, in response to Ben’s hello, like he’d been worse. “So, go on, then,” he said, changing the subject. “Where’s my serenade?”

“You what?” Ben wasn’t sure what he was talking about. Had he forgotten something at the supermarket? It was too early in the morning for all of this…

Paul just rolled his eyes. At the same time, though, he lifted up his hand. “Here,” he said. “Catch.” And then he was throwing down a set of keys.

Ben caught them, using both his hands and rustling the CosMart bag. For a moment he could only look at the things, three keys on a ring with a purple tag, like a spare set or something. One for the flat, presumably, and another couple for the funeral parlour. They were both silver and chunky; the flat front door’s was small and faded brass, just like the one Ben had seen Paul use a dozen times, too often with a wink.

Most likely, he wouldn’t get to keep them, but Ben still felt like he was holding something precious. “I’ll see you in a mo,” he said to himself, trying to ignore the rubbish as he headed to the front door.

* * *

It was more nerve-racking than seeing Paul in the hospital, somehow, letting himself into his house. At least, that was how Ben translated the sucking, still panic inside him as he slotted in the key and turned the latch. He didn’t know what to do with himself. He knew Paul was getting better, technically; and they’d been all right before Paul had come home, but Ben didn’t know what he was going to say to him now.

He was a mess, and the stuff with Pam and Jenny wasn’t helping. That was why he’d been kept away – he knew it was – and in his moments Ben could accept that it was probably half just the shock, why Pam was reacting the way she was. She couldn’t mean all of it. She wanted someone to blame – someone to lash out on – and Ben knew exactly how she felt because he was doing the same to her. But then she’d stop him seeing Paul again, and… And that led him to where he was now, sneaking in and awkward.

He didn’t know how he was going to explain how needy he’d been feeling. How he’d wake up in the middle of the night convinced Paul was still out there, dying in a gutter. The night before this one, Ben had woken up, reached out and unlocked his phone to dial 999 before he’d remembered he didn’t need to.

By the time Ben had made it up the stairs, each one taken with the lightest step he could manage, Paul was still struggling with the window.

 _Flaming hell…_ That put most things into perspective.

Rushing over, Ben tried to move with as light a tread as he could, but he didn’t manage much. “Here,” he said, with urgency, knocking Paul’s hands away from the lower sash. He tried to keep his voice low, so it mostly came out in a hiss. “I’ll do that, won’t I?”

“Cheers,” Paul replied in his own hushed voice, breathing hard and clutching his side. “It’s the spring,” he added, and Ben could see what he meant, as he had to lean pretty hard himself to get the thing down and closed up again.

Still, he couldn’t help but roll his eyes. _Not the broken arm, then?_ he thought to himself. _Or the other._

With the panic over, though, Ben tried not to think about that. He turned to look at Paul again, trying to feel the moment for what it was and not think about his own need to know Paul was all right. Of course, his boyfriend was smiling in a way that somehow didn’t reach his eyes, so it wasn’t all that easy.

 _What’s wrong?_ was what Ben meant to ask, but as Paul looked away again it was clear that would get nowhere. He searched his brain for something to say – found nothing – then opened his mouth and heard the words come out. “I bought you a penguin,” he stage-whispered, holding up his CosMart bag.

Still clutching his side with both hands, little stick legs poking out of his red shorts, Paul blinked like he didn’t know what to say. The sparkle flashed back into his expression, though, so that was all right. “A penguin,” he repeated, smiling like he couldn’t believe it.

“Yeah,” Ben confirmed. He pulled it out of the bag, for something to do with his hands. It took longer than it should have done, but after a long rustle of plastic Ben was showing him the potato-sized cuddly toy. “It’s stupid,” he said, waving it once, side-to-side, before stepping forward. “But – well,” he added, still whispering as he passed the thing over without meeting Paul’s eyes. “It’s yours. Get well soon, I suppose.”

“Thanks,” Paul replied sceptically, squeezing the thing like it was going to sing a song. They hadn’t had any singing ones. The expression on his face, when Ben dared glance at it, was mostly bemused. He was frowning like he was trying not to laugh and he was squinting at the thing with one eye. “Tell me the truth, though,” he said, his voice dipping into normal speech as he glanced up at Ben. “Do you fancy me at all, holding this thing?”

Ben rolled his eyes. It wasn’t like he had much practice at this stuff, was it? He should’ve known he’d get it wrong. “I’ll have it back, then,” he said, chalking the whole thing up to experience and reaching out a hand.

With what seemed like an unconscious reaction, though, Paul stepped away and clutched the thing to his ribs. “Here, hands off,” he said, definitely just talking now. “He’s mine, Perry the Penguin.”

Les probably wasn’t sleeping that heavily, so Ben tried not to laugh. He caught Paul’s eye – and the frown on his face – and when that frown turned into a grin it felt almost like things were going to be OK.

“Come on,” Ben said, wrapping an arm behind Paul’s back and steering clear of his bad side. He was warm and comforting and fit exactly how he should. And he was pretty much still A+ on the scale of fanciability. “You’ve been on your feet long enough.”

Paul snickered, but tossed his arm over Ben’s shoulder as he led them back towards the bedroom. “As the actor said to the bishop.” Even though there wasn't much chance of that.

* * *

The plan had been to have a conversation, probably, once they’d climbed into bed – but of course, they fell asleep. Either Les wasn’t paying attention or he didn’t want to know, but they slept right into Ben’s next set of dreams.

He was back in the hospital. He had a concussion, they told him, and that was what was making everything seem so weird. Nothing to do with his boyfriend lying, dying – somewhere. Somewhere Phil and Ian had seen him; abandoned him. Somewhere that wasn’t here in A&E.

Someone had found some spare glasses – not his – and they were close enough to his prescription to help, but they were still doing his head in. His hearing aid was done, so everything sounded wrong, like it was coming from behind him, just over his right shoulder, the way the voices had come the night before.

His dad hadn’t come back to the hospital, not to this sea of faces and green. Ian and his gopher – Steven – they were the only ones with him and they were yammering on, their heads bobbing like children’s TV characters. The police were there as well, asking him questions and peering at him, like they could see the gayness leaching out of his pores. Right now they were chatting over in the corner, but he couldn’t make out what they were saying.

It could take a few hours, sometimes, apparently, for your head to hurt the way it should when four blokes – or just one; it must have just been one – decided to try and kick it in. Ben was starting to feel it, but he was also lost, and all there were around him was chairs.

It took him a moment. Ian was going on about something and Steven was loitering. Ben leaned against the green-blue wall, then tried to remember what the woman in scrubs had said about the ICU. It was a walk, apparently: left at the end of the corridor and then down the long route by the café. Presumably there was some back route the doctors were allowed to take between A&E and there, because otherwise that bloke in the newspaper was right and these places _were_ all death traps.

Leaving Ian and Steven to it, their yammering heads, Ben righted himself – squinting until the world righted itself too – and headed out of the back of the A&E waiting room, heading for the long walk.

When he passed the café, he was annoyed he didn’t have any cash on him, because he realised he wouldn’t have minded a cup of tea.

The woman in the scrubs – she’d warned him that it was likely Ben wouldn’t be able to see Paul until he was stabilised, if he ever was. He’d probably been moved from the room with the window, where Phil and Ian had seen him. He was probably up to all sorts, all alone and hidden away.

 _Your friend… He’s dead,_ his dad had told him, not a flicker of emotion in his eyes. Only he hadn’t; that was just what Ben had heard. _Your [-]friend,_ his dad had said, with the space for the ‘boy’ there, but inaudible. He could’ve just said Paul, of course, but he hadn’t.

_Paul, Paul, Paul…_

_“Your [-]friend… They got him in hospital. He don’t look good.”_

Ben was trudging along, feeling all the stares of the people walking by. He wondered why they were looking at him so funny; why they were looking at him at all. He wondered if any of them would have helped out last night, or if they’d have stood and laughed. A woman with curly hair had her hips hanging out of her top – she looked like she’d have filmed the whole thing and happily put it online.

When he got to the next unit, then the next, then the next, they all looked much like the last, but there was someone at a desk and Ian was gone. Ben tried to focus on her, though he couldn’t quite place her eyes on her face. His head throbbed again. “Paul Coker,” he said, and it made one of his ribs scrape, but he didn’t wince. “Paul – Coker,” he said again, in case she hadn’t heard him.

“Just a moment,” the woman replied, and she was wearing the slutty nurse’s uniform they’d seen in the shop window by the club the night before. And there was music playing; kicking-out music.

She hadn’t been there – this was the dream talking – but Ben couldn’t see anything right.

The woman clicked something with long white fingernails; typed something like there were ants crawling across her keyboard, and then Ben had the ants back on him. They were crawling all across his hands and face, like they’d been that morning, that whole line of them, leading to the torn white rubbish sack by the side of that hot, stinking dumpster.

“No; sorry,” the nurse was saying, her eyes sad and round and then old, and then young, and then old again. “You’ve got to keep going.”

“But what’s happened?” Ben demanded, trying to shake everything off his hands. “What’s going on?”

“What are you doing here?” a voice interrupted him, and then they were in a different room; a waiting room. Blue, not green – or green, not blue.

It was Pam.

She looked – shaken. Les was hovering behind her shoulder, almost blending into the crowd of other waiting families. “Pam,” Ben said, relieved that there might be finally someone who understood this feeling he had, the way the world wouldn’t stop blurring out every time he looked away from it; the way it was never quite there in front of him. “I heard Paul was –“

“This is your fault,” she said, and Ben froze.

_She knows. She saw it all. She knows. She knows._

_”Ben.”_

_**”What was that you said?”** _

_“Leave it…”_

_**”Yeah; I’m talking to you. I want to know what you said.”** _

He was dreaming, wasn’t he? He was dreaming.

“I should never have let him…” And yet Pam was pointing her finger, long and withering, and they were still in the hospital. She was still looking at him, and everything was white and pale. “You always were a nasty piece of work. You’re the worst thing that ever happened to him.”

Les said something, but Ben didn’t hear what it was. It sounded angry; like he agreed.

“It should be you in there.” And Pam was crying; weeping. “I wish to God it was you in there.”

Maybe that was what this feeling was, Ben thought; the glass that was cutting him off from the world. It was some sort of divine punishment. “So do I,” he tried to tell Pam. He shouted it, and as the room spun again, he realised he wanted it with everything he had. _So do I._

“Get out of my sight,” was all Pam would say back to him, fading into green. “Go on. I don’t want you anywhere near him.”

Ben was walking again, alone and in some other corridor. Someone was walking along with a clipboard – a large man in purple scrubs. When he passed by, Ben heard the sound of a bus going down Oxford Street, from the wrong side of his head, like the hearing aid that wasn’t there was playing him sounds still.

_Rrrrrrrrmmmmm…_

It was dark. It wasn’t that cold; just a little. They did say there was a heatwave on the way. Ben kept walking down the corridor, but there were voices behind him, laughing and joking and shouting.

“Oi, you two! Which of you wants to suck my cock?”

Ben’s shoulders clenched. He was hot suddenly, burning with anger. _Paul._ Where was Paul? Why couldn’t he find him? Wasn’t he in the hospital? Why were they on a road? Why was it so dark?

“Oi! I’m talking to you. Don’t you fancy me? Or is it you’re too sore from the last time?”

He needed to find Paul. Ben had lost him; his glasses were gone and he couldn’t see anything.

“You’re disgusting, you know that? You all make me sick. You make all of us _sick_. Don’t you got nothing to say for yourselves?”

It was getting desperate now; where was he?

“Come on; where are you? Come on, you faggots…”

Ben woke up with a jolt.

* * *

For a moment, he could only breathe, every muscle tingling as he took in the sun coming in through the window, his place on the good side of Paul’s chest, the heavy duvet that had covered them in sweat like they had actually done it.

His eyes adjusted quickly enough, but he could still hear it, that piece of scum’s voice in his head, shouting at them like they were…

“Ben?” Paul asked him sleepily, with narrow eyes.

The sound of his heartbeat was so loud in his ears, Ben wondered if Paul could hear it too. Else if he could feel it, hammering away with only skin and bone and Paul’s t-shirt between them.

It hadn’t happened quite like all of that, in the hospital. Ian and Steven had been there, but they’d come with him, been a bit more useful. Pam hadn’t said all of that stuff, he didn’t think, but she’d said some of it, and it had hurt like nothing else. She might have said more. He couldn’t remember the details, but he remembered the feeling. With what he realised now had been the concussion, that weekend and the next couple of days had all been something of a blur.

But the night – the night had been exactly like that. Somehow Ben’s head had kept it all preserved perfectly: all the voices and everything that had been said.

There had been a lot of dreams, afterwards – some detailed like this one, and some not quite so action-packed. Sometimes he was walking Soho, all the streets running together, looking and looking and looking while the sun came up, but unable to find Paul anywhere. In other dreams Paul was dead, and Ben was left without him, empty, and he never saw his killers again. There were too many dreams of Paul dying, considering how he was still alive.

Hoping to reassure himself, Ben shuffled his way up the sweaty sheets and kissed his boyfriend on the mouth, gingerly holding a hand to his bruised jaw and hoping to remember that they were both all right.

“Careful,” Paul murmured – but he didn’t sound that serious about it. Ben kissed him until he stopped talking, squeezing his eyes shut and ignoring the pain behind them, pretending like nothing else on earth that this was just another morning.

It didn’t quite work, but it was better than nothing.

Paul, meanwhile, _mmmf_ ed, and covered Ben’s hand on his face with his own, squeezing the scabs on his fingers just slightly. It felt a bit sad, that squeeze, and when they pulled back he looked sad, so there wasn’t much else to be done.

“All right,” Ben said, like he should’ve done hours ago. He’d had enough of all of this. He needed… “Now’s when you tell me what’s wrong.”

Paul frowned at him, clenched his jaw, then shook his head and looked away. He nestled his head into the pillow. “I’m just tired,” he said, like he always did. “Go back to sleep.”

Sometimes Ben wondered if Paul realised he was allowed to be in a mood. “Paul,” he said, with a sigh, rolling over to take his weight onto his own back. There was barely any space in the bed, but he managed to squeeze in. Perry the Penguin, of course, took a nosedive from where he’d been wedged between the headboard and the wall and landed on his face. He had to chuck the thing on the floor. “You’ve snuck me round your house at, I dunno, far too early in the morning,” he carried on, a bit irate. “We’re hiding in your room – things are flying at me – and you ain’t said one word about why.”

“Yeah, well,” Paul murmured, looking to where Perry had met his dismal end. The collar of his green t-shirt was all rumpled around his neck. “You know why.”

“No,” Ben reminded him – because he could guess, but he didn’t _know._ “I don’t.”

The silence was long after that, and with his eyes on the hollow of Paul’s jaw Ben thought there were a few things he was likely to say. None of them were especially promising.

_Well, you never come round to see me, do you? I thought this way you couldn’t say no._

_I’m on these new pills and they knock me right out – eight in the morning to ten o’clock at night, most days._

_I’ve figured out my nan ain’t been letting you in._

But in the end, it was the worst of the lot, and not anything Ben had predicted. “I was there, wasn’t I?” Paul said, swallowing and rolling his head to face the ceiling.

He couldn’t mean… Ben shuffled over to an elbow, watching Paul’s face. He looked grim, glaring upwards, and Ben wished he could read all the other things going on in his expression.

“When you came by yesterday,” then Paul began again, “I was there. At the top of the stairs.”

He couldn’t mean… _No._ No way. This couldn’t be happening. “Paul,” Ben said quickly, not entirely remembering what had come out of his mouth. “I didn’t mean any of it. I shouldn’t’ve…”

“But it’s true, ain’t it?” Paul said, sniffing like he was going to cry. “Nan’s the reason my mum… And now she wants to take you away from me.”

“No,” Ben told him, brushing a hand into Paul’s hair not because it wasn’t true, but because he would give anything for it not to be. “No; that’s not… It’s my fault, innit, yeah?” He touched Paul’s face, but it didn’t turn back towards him. “I should’ve been looking out for you, and now you’re nan… She’s only saying what’s– what I’m thinking myself anyway.”

“What, so you reckon I don’t need you either?” It was sarcastic, how he said it, but he still turned his head to the wall.

“You know it ain’t,” Ben complained, annoyed at how it was all coming out. He leaned down so their heads were as close as he could get them, bumping his nose into one of Paul’s cheekbones, and smelling the smell of the stuff he never did put in his hair. “You ain’t getting rid of me,” he swore quietly. Someone had washed up a bit for their date, just like Ben had, and didn’t that say it all? “You know you ain’t never…”

Paul shivered, rolling back so they could kiss again, just about as urgently and just about as dangerously considering Paul was still the barely-walking wounded. He could wriggle his good arm well enough, though, and got that out from between them to drag Ben closer. There weren’t many angles for Ben to do anything, but he had Paul’s t-shirt in his fist and his shoulder in his other hand, and that seemed to go down all right. Their near legs wound up together while Ben stretched his sweaty, socky feet.

“Promise me you ain’t going nowhere,” Paul said afterwards, dashing the words in quickly between huffs of breath. He stared Ben in the face, serious, and his black eye was distracting.

“Don’t worry about me, yeah?” Ben told him, bringing up a thumb to brush Paul’s cheek, just underneath where the skin broke out into bruise. “Worry about yourself.”

“I am,” Paul said, still serious. “I need you to be all right.”

“Yeah?” Ben replied, not letting up. “Well, _same_. I am fine. You’re the one who’s…”

And then he swallowed, because he couldn’t say it.

.


	2. Jay

About two weeks before, it was not all that clear that Ben would be fine.

Physically he was all right, at least compared to Paul. Most of the cuts and bruises were minor, because if there was one thing that they taught you in juvie, it was how to take a beating. It was like care as far as that went, at least from what Jay could work out.

Of course, being Ben, he hadn’t managed to keep himself from getting kicked right in the side of the head, and that had left him with a nasty concussion that at times put him staring just over your shoulder, rather than at your face. Steven said the doctors reckoned he probably had a bit of shock as well, but Jay had so little time for Steven’s nosey little interjections that he didn’t even care.

They were all idiots anyway. The lot of them – Ian and Billy and Steven – they were all going on as if they believed Ben’s story about the mugging. As if it made sense – all this over a pair of poxy mobile phones. They were having a laugh, and you only needed to take one look at Ben’s face when he talked about it to know that wasn’t what had really happened.

Honey mostly stayed out of it, because apparently she was the brains of this operation. When Jay said he was fine looking after Ben on his own, she glanced at him like she’d figured it out as well, and managed to make the rest of them clear off.

It was difficult to know what to do with him, Ben, when it was just them on Billy’s ratty sofa. It had clearly all got a bit much, because he had a little cry, but beyond that he wasn’t saying anything. He said that the Cokers hated him – again – and Paul was something or other that Ben couldn’t get out of his mouth, but none of that was worth listening to.

In the end, Jay made him a cup of tea and stuck the telly on, because there didn’t seem much else to do. He certainly didn’t want to start thinking about all of it himself.

There were adverts and then there was a trailer and then the doorbell rang. It was Louise. On the one hand, that was all anyone needed – but on the other, she did bring with her a slightly better-sounding distraction than the particular episode of _Top Gear_ that was coming on for what had to be the fourth time in about six months.

“Johnny Carter’s got a thing on at the Vic,” she announced to Ben, while Jay made his way back round to the sofa. “For Paul, I mean.” It was like she was trying to be sympathetic, which was an odd look on her. “It’s dead weird,” she added when Ben glanced up; “I think he fancies him or something… But people are going," she dismissed. "Showing they care.”

Ben didn't say anything, but they went, eventually, and fair enough the pub was full. Louise had to go to the bar and get them all cokes, because Ben was in no fit state and Jay couldn’t get himself served, but they had their table round the corner from the door and it didn’t matter, really.

It was better than Billy’s house. It had to be better than Billy’s house, Jay thought, to sit in the hubbub of the Vic, with people around so they didn’t have to acknowledge that Louise was doing all the talking. Jay shouldn’t have been sat with her anyway, of course, but with everything that was going on it was easier to pretend it was still February, and the brown liquid running down his throat was the only coke he’d ever stuck in his face. The table between the three of them was familiar, and it didn’t matter it was sticky. It only needed to take the beermats.

The table on the other side of the door filled up soon after theirs did, with Abi and her sister and her mates, and that was nice, how they’d come out for Paul. Steven went to the bar and Jay watched while Lauren faffed with their baby. Or Peter’s baby, anyway, but no one needed that idiot. Stuck on the end, Abi kept sniping and generally looked like she didn’t want to be there, while Whitney and Lee were laughing like they didn’t think Johnny’s flirting over with Steven was real. It didn’t quite fit the mood; they looked like they felt bad about it afterwards, when Steven came back. The thing was, as far as Jay knew neither of them had ever had much to do with Paul anyway, so what did they think was expected? They didn’t know him like Lola, who’d worked with Paul all last summer; they definitely didn’t know him like Abi and they definitely, definitely didn’t know him like Ben.

They didn’t know him like Jay did either, really, but that had all been a secret in the way Ben bunking off with Paul had been a secret.

If Jay hadn’t been feeling so flat recently, he might have thought about that a bit more. As it was, he took another sip of his coke and watched as the Vic’s doors opened, between them and the Branning gang.

It was Pam and Les, the stars of the show. Jay would’ve felt bad for them – and he did, of course he did – but he’d also heard a bit about what had happened at the hospital, so he wasn’t in all that charitable a mood.

Jay’s leg jumped to watch them now. “Oh, look at all these people, Les,” he heard Pam say, spinning to face her husband. “Aren’t they kind?”

She turned back to the crowd then, and for a second she caught Jay’s eye, realising he was watching her. Her sad smile faded slightly; she glanced at what had to be Louise, then over Jay’s shoulder at Ben, who was probably hiding in his hoodie.

Jay watched as she resolutely blanked all three of them, turning to the table on her left, the other table, and pulled Les around with her. “It’s so nice of you all,” she was saying again, a waver in her voice but still saying the words loud enough for Jay to hear. He had pretty good hearing, unlike other people he could name. “That you would come out tonight…” She was talking to the gang of them, five randoms and a baby, people she barely knew. “I’m so…” Pam continued, while Les lingered behind her shoulder. “Paul would be so glad to know his friends are thinking of him.”

It was almost funny, how uncomfortable they all looked. Whitney opened her mouth, like she was going to speak up – but then she thought better of it. Lauren and the older Beale psycho gave each other an awkward glance, because they’d only been back five minutes and everyone seemed to have forgotten. Lauren jiggled the baby carrier and smiled, like that would solve it. Abi, bless her socks, looked straight at Jay and then at Ben, outrage on her face like she couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

 _Can Ben hear this?_ Jay was almost sure she was asking him.

And to think he’d thought they weren’t talking. Jay shook his head and concentrated on Pam again. Behind him, Ben wasn’t moving, so presumably he was still lost in that place wherever he’d gone. It was a small mercy, sometimes, how deaf he was.

“Paul…” Pam was still laying it on thick, coping with something somehow while Les harrumphed. “He has such good friends, doesn’t he? He’s the sweetest boy; not a care in the world until all this. You must visit him when they… He’d like that, I’m sure of it.”

Whitney said something about how they all definitely would visit; how nice Paul was. It was a pile of empty rubbish and Pam lapped it right up.

Abi, of course, being Abi, decided this was the moment to stick her oar in. “You know we’re not his mates, Pam,” she said bluntly, and Jay had to keep himself from laughing. It wasn’t funny, any of this, but he’d heard there had been words in the hospital, so somehow it almost was. “I don’t know why you’re talking to us like we are.”

“Abi!” That was Lauren, and Jay realised he hadn’t missed her.

“What?” Abi? She was indignant. She turned to her sister and said scornfully, “None of you barely know him.”

On a different day, Jay really would have laughed. As it was, Louise did it for him, with just a titter as she took a sip of her coke. When Jay glanced round, even Ben was looking up, squinting like the light was too bright.

Pam clearly had no idea how to react. “What… What a thing to say!” she flapped.

Apparently faking a pregnancy meant you didn’t give a stuff anymore, because Abi just stared at her. Jay thought he knew how that felt. “Look, all right,” Abi said, “I’m sorry all this happened and I hope he comes home soon, but I don’t see why you’re talking about him like he’s the perfectest grandson alive. He’s nice enough and everything,” she continued, pausing for the drama, “but he _stole_ my boyfriend – and, and I bet you knew about it and all,” she accused. Les looked down. “We ain’t mates,” she finished bitterly, glaring at Pam while she took a resolute slug of her wine.

“Seriously, Abi,” Lauren told her, leaning over the table to tap it where the wine had been, “shut up.”

For a moment she said nothing, but then, as the tension hung, Abi slammed her glass on the table and spoke up again. “No, I won’t,” she insisted, looking at Jay again – and weirdly, she was blinking back a couple of tears. He felt for her, for absolutely no reason. “We ain’t mates,” she was telling Jay now, glaring at Pam whenever she got the chance. “But – we could have been.” _Couldn’t we?_ she seemed to be asking him. “Because his actual _friends_ ,” she finished, turning back to Pam, “they’re my oldest…”

She looked hopeless, but Jay couldn’t help realise she was right. If she and Ben hadn’t decided to drag them all off on some self-destructive, 1950s, suburban happy-couple nightmare – if things had been different – she would have been sitting at that table with them.

“And I can’t believe you’d come in here and talk about them like they’re _nothing_.” Eventually Abi got her thread back, like she always did, and she was on her high horse again, raising her chin at Pam and Les. She was insufferable, really. “And – and I can’t believe you’d talk about Paul like he’s this delicate little flower when he done the things he’s done,” she insisted, sounding more desperate than made sense. “He ain’t like that at all. And he ain’t dead neither, so we don’t have to –”

Jay had to look away, just for a moment. It had struck Ben as well, what Abi was saying; his leg bobbed once and he’d covered his head again.

It was weird. Listening to Abi, Jay found he was finally able to figure out how he felt about all this. Putting his worry for Ben to one side – because he would be all right, eventually, or at least back to normal, whatever that was – Jay found he was nonetheless very, very angry. Maybe it was the coke; maybe it was the aggravation from not having done none today – but the idea of it all struck a nerve. Him, Jay, sure: of course he was going to get beaten up for being a nonce, by Linzi’s brothers because they were looking out for their sister. And Ben spent half his life looking for trouble, so it was always surprising he didn’t end up in more fights than he did.

But _Paul_? What had he ever done?

Ben was hiding something, because he always was, but there was no doubt in Jay’s mind that the bones of the story were true. There’d been a fight, and the pair of them had been outnumbered, and now Paul was in hospital while his nan put around some story that he was a saint. And that was sort of fair enough, but it didn’t exactly get it right. Paul was a nicer bloke than Jay knew he and Ben were, definitely, but part of that was about the fact Paul gave them the time of day. It wasn’t about him keeping his nose clean of all the muck on Albert Square.

That was the reason he was in the hospital in the first place, giving time to the likes of them, most likely. It didn’t seem right, ignoring that.

Mostly Jay was angry that Paul was in hospital at all. But it was also starting to annoy him, all these people sitting in this pub who didn’t realise it was their grief they were sad about. Jay _was_ Paul’s mate. It had been the pair of them watching the most screwed-up parts of the whole Ben and Abi saga, and Paul was the only one besides Jay, as far as Jay knew, who’d realised what a complete mess it all was. That forged bonds, and they were bonds you couldn’t pick up buying flowers off the market, once every second Sunday.

This was their upset; the four of theirs. Paul’s grandparents’ too, of course – but they’d been stealing Ben away as gladly as they would have stolen Paul back from Ben. Thinking about it, they were the reason Jay had basically had no one these past few weeks.

“I think you should watch your tongue,” Pam warned Abi after the silence mellowed, and Jay saw it, the spite she’d been handing out. “You’ve not got any right to talk about my Paul like that. Whatever _that boy_ did,” she said, raising a hand, and it was pretty clear who she meant without her pointing, “don’t you think you can go around saying –”

“What?” Jay called over, from the other side of the Vic door and from exactly where Pam was pointing at. He hadn’t meant to speak up, exactly, but it turned out to be hard not to. Abi was still looking distraught, and despite everything it got to him. It had been a long, long day. “That Paul weren’t involved and all?”

When the nearby crowd drew silent, Jay glanced behind him, because of course this wasn’t actually why he was there. Ben had his head in his hands. Watching him, Louise looked like she was going to cry, all those Mitchell emotions rattled by the sight of her brother in this state. Abi was frowning sadly at them, even at Louise, and Jay felt the weight of just how awful all of this was and what could have happened. He could keep his own emotions at bay, he hoped; he had practice. He stood up – and Pam turned around to look at him like he was scum. The bottom half of her face was quivering.

All Jay knew about Pam, really, was that she was two-faced, so she wasn’t about to guilt-trip him into shutting up. She was Paul’s nan, and for the last few weeks Ben had loved her like she was his and all, but that didn’t make her anything to him. Ben was still getting over Peggy dying; Jay had been expecting things to end in tears ever since the bit where Pam had said she’d give him a job only to turn around a day later and kick him merrily out the door. There was straight dealing, to his mind, and then there was the Cokers.

“Here,” and there was Mick at the bar, just like there was always Mick at the bar. “Why don’t you get out? We’re trying to raise a glass to a nice young man down the hospital, so –”

“Yeah,” Jay told him, raising his voice because, actually, he _had_ had enough, and it was getting to him, all of this. “And he’s been better to me than the lot of you put together,” he told the entire pub, because they were all looking at him anyway. “So, sorry,” he added, raising a hand, “but I ain’t about to let him be your excuse to feel good about yourselves on a Saturday night.”

If she hadn’t been before, Pam was now _definitely_ looking at him like he was scum.

Jay let her look. “And you know what, Pam?” he said. “Paul’s a great mate – a great bloke – but it ain’t ‘cause you go round telling him and everyone else that all he is is nice and sweet and lovely. Yeah? The Paul I know – he gets sarky with you, and he…” God, Paul; he was ridiculous… How had Jay ended up with these ridiculous mates? “He won’t let things go and –“ Why would anyone do this to him? “– and he’s got a streak for drama about a mile wide.”

There was the tiniest little laugh then, from Ben. Jay reckoned he and maybe Louise would’ve been the only ones who heard it.

Still, Jay hiked his thumb over his shoulder, not wanting to draw attention to Ben, but angry – so angry on his behalf. “Why d’you think him and this one get on so well, eh?” Pam’s lip actually curled. The cow. “Or don’t you like to think about it?” Jay asked her, because he had no stakes in this ridiculous ‘respect your elders’ business, and this woman was a snake, to his mind. She reminded him of… “I mean, how much time is it you spend wishing Paul was someone he ain’t?”

“You don’t know my grandson,” was what Pam told him, darkly. “Not like I do. And you don’t know me.” She seemed dangerous to Jay, about then. Seriously dangerous. “Not you and not…” She raised her chin towards Ben. “Neither of you know him at all.”

“Well, then I feel sorry for him,” Jay told her back. Ben was moving behind him; presumably because he needed to get out. Louise was going with him – she went around the table to follow Ben’s path behind Jay, out of the way of the shouting. “Because if _you’re_ right then nobody round here does.”

* * *

It turned out that Ben had left the pub to be sick. He was still retching when Jay found him, explicitly barred from the Vic now until further notice. Louise was being useless, likely because it was entirely possible Ben was actually sobbing rather than spewing his guts out, tucked in halfway down the Vic’s back alley while his sister loitered at the gate.

“Go home, Louise,” Jay told her, not meeting her eyes. He didn’t risk touching her – because of this stupid, stupid, stupid situation he’d made for himself – but he made sure she could see he wasn’t joking. “Just go.”

Clearly Ben had only just made it to where he was. He was leaning heavily on the wall, half standing and half crouching, his left hand on his chest and catching the warm evening light. There was a tattoo on his ring finger, Jay noticed then for the first time, just up from the wounds on his knuckles.

He couldn’t help but stare, Jay, reading what it said. It was only for a moment, but a flush of something went through him, quick and cold and abrupt. Half of it had to be embarrassment – because only Ben; only, only Ben – but the other half was like – anticipation, or apprehension, or something: a feeling that something had happened without him noticing that had made the world switch gears. Jay had no money for a wedding present, did he? What was he going to do? He couldn’t exactly buy them something with his drug profits. And he definitely had no idea what you did for a gay stag do. It felt like he was going to need to figure something out, and it was all coming at him out of practically nowhere.

Could they all just get drunk at The Albert, maybe? That would be simple enough.

Louise left without saying a word, in the end, shuffling off while Jay shook himself out of his moment, and presumably she hadn’t seen what he saw. Then there was someone else coming out of the Vic and it was Johnny Carter and that was Jay's life, wasn’t it? Dealing with mugs.

“Is he all right?” Johnny asked, and he was a nice lad and all, but Jay did not have time for this.

Pulling himself together, he stepped up into the alley to block Johnny’s line of sight. Then he looked the other man in the face and asked him straight, “Will you go away?” _Ben, Ben, Ben,_ his head kept thinking. _How the hell did you keep all this a secret?_ “Leave him alone for a bit.”

Ben was sick again, and it could well have been the effects of the concussion, or the hangover, but Jay doubted it. They probably didn't help, but there was this keening noise coming out of him as he shrank into the wall, and Jay was forced to remember all the times when, actually, things did break down and this stupid boy stopped being his mate and became his lost little brother, who possibly fancied him but generally had no idea what to do with any feelings of love or affection – not his own and definitely not other people’s. Who apparently could get this caught up with someone right at the same time as he treated them like rubbish for the best part of a year.

Jay had already known that, of course, back in January. He should have seen what would happen once they got together for real.

And now Jay himself could feel the tears coming on. He abandoned Johnny and dropped down to where Ben was on the ground, holding the idiot close at the same time as he tried to avoid all the sick.

It was a mess. It was a stupid mess.

“It’s all my fault, Jay…” Ben sobbed like a child, all crouched over himself and shaking. “I did this.”

Johnny was still hovering; Jay could hear his footsteps shuffling around, and it wasn’t right, really, for him to see Ben like this. Jay wiped his own face with his hand and tried to concentrate, but it was hard. It was really, really hard. “It’s all right,” he murmured, trying to be subtle. “Yeah? Come on.”

Thank heaven for small mercies, there was the sound of someone else in the street, and it was someone that when she had time to think for five minutes actually knew what she was about.

“Johnny, leave it,” Abi told him, sounding like she hated everyone, but wrenching the bloke hard enough at least that the gate slammed behind them.

And Ben didn’t need to say anything, swivelling on the gravel and slumping down out of the way of the coke he’d spewed up.

“It wasn’t about them phones, was it?” Jay asked him straight out, because he had a feeling Ben needed to say it.

Ben sniffed, rubbing his face and still caught up in this particular shot of misery. “I’ve killed him, haven’t I?” he swore, his eyes red where he peered out of his pebbly glasses. “And no one will remember – no one’ll know what he was really like.”

“Slow down, all right?” Jay heard the words – of course he did – but even if Ben was Ben there was no way he’d done the worst of this. “Tell me what happened.”

“We was at a club…” he spat out, sniffing again as he looked away. “We was at this stupid club…”

And then slowly but surely, between the hiccups and the pauses, the story came out. Slumping off his feet himself, Jay could imagine it all perfectly, the way he and he bet the police couldn’t imagine what Ben had described before.

“And it’s my fault,” Ben finished, his voice cracking again. “I asked for it; I deserved it. And now Paul…” He wiped his mouth, but that didn’t save his eyes from going wet again. “He might never wake up, Jay. They don't know…”

 _Oh, Ben…_ “It ain’t your fault,” Jay told him, and the words came out hot with all the misplaced anger he wished he could hurl right back in those boys’ faces. He took hold of Ben’s knee; squeezed a bit too tightly. “You don’t have no idea what might’ve happened otherwise. Might be they’d have left you alone; might be they’d have killed the pair of you.” That was what Jay saw – the two of them ducked into a doughnut shop, only to get jumped on the way out by some louts with nothing better to do. _Scum._ “It is what it was.”

“He’ll never forgive me,” Ben continued, shaking his head and not listening, even if he did have better control over himself than he’d had a few minutes ago. He was staring off into the distance again, over Jay’s shoulder and off at the gate. “It’s over.”

“Yeah, well,” Jay insisted, because he had to have a go, “you try him.” This was always what it was with Ben, wasn’t it? The guilt – always the guilt – and then the fear. He always thought he was going to get himself rejected, and this was just another one of those moments.

But Jay couldn’t quite believe that he would be. Not with this one, and not after everything.

“You love him, don’t you?” Jay asked, glancing pointedly at his hand. Ben’s gaze dropped back to his, and he was staring like he couldn’t believe anyone would dare acknowledge it out loud. “And he loves you back.”

“He said he did,” his brother whispered, like it was a secret, and not absolutely flaming obvious. He grabbed hold of his ring finger, pensively. “And I thought maybe… But I dunno,” he cut himself off – shook his head and dropped his hand and shied away from the idea entirely. “And _now_ … How can he, Jay?”

“Well, he knows what you’re like, don’t he?” It was only half-past five, so Jay wasn’t sure how it could be so dark in this alleyway. It was baking hot, and the place was starting to stink of sick, and like too many times with Ben all they had was concrete, bricks and the other one. “You know he knows what you’re like, and he don’t hate you for it, does he?” It never got easier, and what they needed, Jay realised, was to keep their merry band expanding whenever it could. “The idea you could back down when anyone – when they was calling someone you…” Jay sighed. “Maybe he’ll realise he can’t live with it, and that’d be something you’ll have to have out, but he can’t _hate_ you for it, Ben. None of us would.”

A moment passed, and nothing needed to be said. Eventually, with a blink behind his awful replacement specs, Ben put it simply. “I need to see him,” was all he said.

And it was stupid, because what Ben really needed was a good night’s sleep and a pizza, but somehow Jay found himself agreeing to drive.

.


	3. Ben

It was hard work, climbing out of Billy’s car that evening and heading back into Walford General. More than that, it was weird. Ben had fallen asleep on the drive there, just for a few minutes, and dreamed that this was all over: he’d found Paul; they’d talked; they’d agreed to go their separate ways and Ben had held it together, shaking Paul’s hand like they were blokes on _The Apprentice_ and smiling a wry smile while the screams burned inside his chest.

It wasn’t over, though, he’d realised then, opening his eyes to the grim concrete car park. And it wouldn’t happen like that, because it never had before.

The thing was, Ben knew it had only been that morning when he’d last seen the hospital, but everything was different now. Jay was there; the sun was angling in and the shadows were somehow just too long; there were glasses on his face, a bit off though they were. This wasn’t the same place at all.

Ben’s head was hurting worse than it had been that morning, despite the codeine he’d finally remembered they’d given him, and he hadn’t quite managed to get the smell of sick off his hands. His legs, it seemed, were packing in after all the walking they’d done coming home from Soho – and all the dancing they’d done a few hours before that, though it was hard to believe that had been him in this life. The lift doors seemed far away, and all in all he thought he was going to collapse on the road markings.

In the end, though, after a brief stumble and a bit of help from Jay, Ben was somehow on his feet and moving forward, into the depths of the hospital.

Intensive Care had a public foyer, and it was quieter than Ben remembered it. Already his recollection was patchy, but it had been Saturday morning and he remembered there being people. Presumably half the patients had died off now, or gone home, and the place was waiting for its next lorry load of stab victims.

The thought stuck in Ben’s head for a moment, all these dead people, and he imagined Paul ticking him off for it. Of course, he then remembered how possible it was that Paul was one of the dead ones, and nothing seemed worth thinking about anymore.

“We’re here for Paul Coker,” Jay was saying around the side of him. Ben hadn’t noticed they’d made it to the nurses’ desk.

The woman was the same from that morning – a perfectly nice-seeming woman in her fifties or something with a short haircut and blue scrubs. She smiled at them; typed something into her computer; took a file from someone else in scrubs who buzzed by; put that in a pile; scrolled and clicked a bit more with her mouse.

All the while she was coming out with soothing, “Hmm; let’s see,” phrases, but they just put Ben’s back up. By the end of it, he was feeling pretty irate, and it didn’t help that she came out with, “I’m sorry; I don’t think you’ll be able to see him this evening. He went into surgery about an hour ago.”

“Surgery?” Ben demanded. It didn’t make sense. There was no reason for Paul to be in surgery, unless… Had he even woken up at all? Did he know he was safe? He probably couldn’t think anything, but Ben didn’t know; what if Paul couldn’t work out he wasn’t dead? “What d’you mean, surgery?”

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you any more,” the woman said firmly, with a smile. “You’re welcome to wait here; the doctors are doing everything they can to help your friend.”

Ben had half a mind to tell her exactly what he thought about the lot of them and their helping his ‘friend’, but Jay was pulling on his arm. “Cheers,” he said to the woman, quickly, dragging Ben towards the relatives’ room. “Come on,” he said, and they left the echoes of the main hospital for the eerie, funereal silence of random, lonely people in a waiting room painted NHS lavender.

“Why can’t none of these people give you a straight answer?” Ben asked Jay, for something to do. He was trying to ward off the gnawing feeling in his gut that something was very wrong. It had been with him all day, and it was far too late, but part of him was stuck in the night before – very drunk, very beaten up, no glasses and everything sounding off, wandering around empty streets and shouting Paul’s name over and over again, getting nowhere. Who had found him? Ben certainly hadn’t.

His ear felt wet. Ben pressed his fingers to it, trying to figure out if it was bleeding again. It wasn’t.

Jay sighed, and it came from the wrong direction. His hair clashed the purple walls. “Look,” he said, exasperated. “We’re here now. You know you’d have had news if there was any.”

Ben snorted, looking up the white ceiling. One of the lights had a flicker. “Not likely,” he muttered, remembering that morning and remembering that afternoon. “Pam’s cut me off, ain’t she? I know she has.”

Jay tutted. “You know she don’t –”

“No, Jay,” Ben said, though Jay was probably somehow, somewhere, right. “I’ve got nothing. I need to –”

“ _You_ need to be resting,” Jay interrupted that particular thought. He sounded worried, which was nice of him. “You can’t walk straight; your head’s mashed in – and I bet you ain’t eaten anything all day. Sit down,” he ordered, pointing at the grey seats. “I’ll go and get us some sandwiches.”

“Ben.”

At first, Ben thought he was hearing things. It wouldn’t have been the first time that day. Both he and Jay turned towards this particular sound, though – Ben initially in the wrong direction – and they came face to face with his dad, sitting on a distant bank of chairs with Les, of all people, who had apparently been quicker off the mark getting back here than Ben had been. Pam wasn’t around, and the two sick men both looked old, and they were both wearing black.

The first thing Ben thought, as he and Jay walked over, was that if the man was going to be waiting when he got here, it took some of the punch out of not telling him he was going. It was also not at all what he wanted. He hadn’t wanted the row, and he still didn’t want it. He hadn’t wanted the look on Phil’s face, which he was now going to get. He hadn’t wanted his dad to work out how it was all his fault, how he should have been better, should have been more on his guard with Paul. He knew his dad would think they deserved it.

He didn’t need this right now. The bruises and scrapes on his ribs, on his knees, on his hands, on his face, they were all starting to hurt again and he felt sick, a bit dizzy. He didn’t know what was going on with Paul and why did they have to do this _now_?

“Dad, what’re you doing here?” Ben asked, in an effort to get the thoughts out of his head.

To be fair to him, Phil looked as surprised to see Ben as Ben was to see him. “Had an appointment, didn’t I?” he grunted. As though that explained why he was anywhere near the ICU.

Besides… “No, you ain’t.” Somehow Ben remembered this. Les looked like he’d been happy enough with this version of events, and was now confused to have it contradicted, but that just went to show he was too easy-going for his own good. “Your next appointment’s Monday,” Ben told his dad. “They don’t even do them at the weekend.”

Phil laughed at him, like he couldn’t believe Ben was pushing this. It was only for a second, though, before he shook his head, like Ben was a disappointment. “Suppose I must be here for the same reason you are, then,” he said.

Maybe it was true. Maybe he felt bad about abandoning Paul here that morning. Maybe he remembered seeing him, bleeding and broken and in pain, and then walking way, only caring to start a row about the fact they’d said it was his son. Maybe the punch Ben had thrown at him; the tears he’d poured out onto his polo shirt – maybe that had all meant something.

Even as he said it, though, Phil made it sound like there was no way on earth it was possible. He’d never care like that about Paul. _Same reason you are…_ “So you’ve got a beat-up boyfriend as well, have you?” Ben threw at him, gratified when something flinched behind his dad’s flat expression. “You should’ve told me, Dad. Must be hard.”

They stared at each other, after that. Phil’s lip curled, while Ben tried to stay standing as his legs shook underneath him. His stomach was cramping again.

It was Les who broke the stand-off. “Now, Ben…” he said, at the same time that Ben heard the shuffle of Jay’s trainers. “Let’s not have you…” He couldn’t seem to find the word. “Not as well.”

 _As well?_ Ben stared at him, unable to work out whether the man actually meant he didn’t agree with all of Pam’s outbursts or not. He certainly didn’t look all that friendly. He had the same expression of even-keeled stand-offishness that he’d given Ben every time he’d come round the flat.

It was kind enough, though, and Ben knew that if he wasn’t careful he was going to end up crying on his dad again. That couldn’t happen – not now. It was nice; it made him feel better – but Ben knew the man would always remember any moment of weakness for the times when he wasn’t feeling so generous. It was a stupid thing to do, to let him close. He still remembered what it felt like to think his dad was going to kill him, no joke and no exaggeration, and he couldn’t help but think that one day that feeling would be back. Even now, when Paul was getting carved open for some unknown reason, and even now, when Ben had no idea what he was going to do.

He glanced at Jay, who nodded, changing the subject. “Well, it looks like I’m getting everyone sandwiches,” he said, drawing both Phil and Les’s attention to him. “You got any favourites, Les?”

He looked surprised to be asked, Paul’s granddad. For a moment his kind little eyes looked like Paul’s. “Oh, that’s very kind of you,” he said to Jay. “But don’t worry about me…”

Jay rolled his eyes, because he had about as much patience as Ben did for this fake, good-manners dithering. “Come on,” he said. “I bet you’re starving.”

Les frowned, but gave in. “Well,” he said expansively. “If you can find cheese and pickle in this day and age, I’ve always been partial. Otherwise, I’m quite fond of peri-peri chicken. But anything is fine for me.”

Eyebrows raised, Jay nodded like he didn’t quite know how to take the man seriously. With a glance at Ben, then, he was leaving, but not before Phil seemed to remember that they’d once all been family. “Jay,” he said, and Ben could see how his brother flinched. “You got cash, yeah?”

Sometimes Ben thought it was a miracle that the Mitchell cheek hadn’t killed off the lot of them. Last night; right now… Jay looked like he would happily start another punch up right here in the waiting room. “Got a new job, don’t I?” was all he said.

Then, soon after, he was gone, and Ben didn’t know what to do with himself. Him, his dad and Les were the only ones on this side of the room. There weren’t that many other waiting relatives: some woman was sitting against the other wall, paying them absolutely no mind while she stared up at the ceiling; there was an older couple nearer the door, and the woman was texting while the bloke shuffled his way through a driving magazine. Some other bloke was wearing headphones and watching a kid play with one of those stupid thing they always had in hospitals, the table with the mazey coloured wires you could chase wooden blocks along.

The air in the room was thick, and Ben thought he could almost smell engine fumes. After a couple more seconds, he found himself yet again battling off the hot, wet feeling of nausea in the back of his throat, his head spinning on itself again with what felt like the ping when something snapped. Just for moment, though, this time, everything slipped into focus and with a bang he was reconnected to the world.

Because they were really here, weren’t they? They were sitting in the local hospital, surrounded by purple and green and death; he’d been beaten up and Paul – Paul had been beaten up worse. He wasn’t still making his way home in a cab, wearing Ben’s coat and smiling, healthy. He was here, somewhere in this building, alone and unconscious and beaten so badly that they weren’t letting him out. Something was broken, something that needed an operation to fix, and they were pulling bits out of him. Possibly it was something they couldn’t fix, like Jane and Bobby, and it would be _weeks_ before he could even move his hands.

“Sit down, will you,” Ben’s dad told him, just as he shut his eyes to hold his chest.

For once, Ben did what he was told, refusing to think. He sank into the nearest chair and felt the blood rushing and throbbing around his legs as the muscles relaxed. The back of his head was mercifully less bruised than the side of it, so he dropped that back against the wall and blinked his eyes shut again until the room stopped spinning.

Promptly, he fell asleep.

* * *

It was a long night, waiting for news, and in hindsight Ben shouldn’t really have refused to go home. He needed to have someone watching him, with his concussion, and in the end Les had volunteered, because he’d had half a mind to stay anyway and Ben had supposedly made the decision easy. Pam was apparently doing an inventory of her ribbons or something else equally pointless.

You couldn’t blame her, particularly. The overnight room wasn’t worth sleeping in, and the way the bed was put together reminded Ben of prison. At half-past two in the morning they got the news that Paul was out of surgery, but the doctor said they would be letting him sleep naturally for as long as possible, once he’d been checked and moved to Recovery, and there wasn’t the staff to let them see him until the morning… In the end, it was only slightly more relief than getting a phone call.

Still, when Les thanked the bloke who told them and pulled out his phone to ring Pam, there was a moment when Ben could almost pretend the Cokers still counted him part of their family. They shared a nod, and Ben went to the loo so he could shed his few tears in private.

That was it, though, and he and Les didn’t speak after. Ben texted Jay and his dad for something to do, then climbed back into bed to watch the rest of the hours go by.

When morning arrived, Pam came by to retrieve Les from the twin bed on the other side of the room. Ben felt like a day-old kebab that had been trodden on and kicked around a bit, so he necked a couple more of the pills in his pocket with a cup of water from the dispenser and watched as the Cokers left without really saying anything.

They were only going to let them visit two at a time, they’d been told the night before. Ben had known he wouldn’t be first. Maybe one day, when everyone knew… But not now.

He was hungry, and his mouth felt horrendous. His dad had left him cash, and the Cokers were likely going to mother Paul right back to sleep, so Ben knew he had a few hours; he got himself breakfast and settled down to stare into the depths of the hospital food court, which was not exactly hopping on that Sunday morning.

 _Is he awake yet?_ Louise texted him, like she didn’t know how not to be annoying. _Have you seen him? What’s taking so long?_

And Johnny, who probably wanted a case study for his next bit of coursework, _Hey, Ben, if you need to talk about anything at all, I’m here. You’re not alone. J._

Jay, who’d got Ben’s text from the night before just said, _Good. Say hi from me._

Ben didn’t know what to say to any of them. His dad never replied, and Ben wondered if he didn’t prefer it that way.

Every time his thoughts turned south, Ben told himself that they wouldn’t have let the Cokers in if Paul wasn’t ready to be seen. He told himself that Paul would forgive him, or that if he wouldn’t he would be kind enough not to spit in Ben’s face. They’d had their moments before, and Paul was always – good about them, or whatever the word was. Better than he should have been and definitely better than Ben ever would be. Though Paul had also always seemed to know that Ben didn’t mean to kick off, even when he didn’t know himself. This was a whole new situation, because he had meant it. He definitely, definitely had.

The burger joint’s egg-cakey sandwich thing was a heavy weight in Ben’s stomach, but as it slowly dissolved it seemed to give him some sort of strength. He had pancakes too, and the weird sausage burger that came with maple syrup. He was starving, it turned out, so after that he had another egg and some chips. That took up a bit of time, but by the last lick of salt off his fingers he couldn’t really take it anymore.

‘How long d’you think I need to wait?’ he texted Jay, ignoring their previous exchange. ‘Pam and Les have been with him since 9.’

The reply only took a couple of seconds. _Dunno. Have you checked they’re still there?_

It was a good point – and through some sort of spooky coincidence, Ben made it to Recovery just as Pam and Les were coming back out into the foyer. They looked at him, and Ben couldn’t read their expressions. Pam’s distaste seemed different than it had been yesterday – maybe less hateful? It wasn’t clear how. She looked his bruises up and down.

“We’ll let your dad know to pick you up,” Les said, his expression neutral as anything.

Ben didn’t bother correcting him that his dad couldn’t drive anymore. He’d be getting a cab or taking the bus. “Thanks.”

And then he was on his own, like he always was at the end of it, standing in a corridor on vinyl flooring with someone who worked for HM the Queen, or maybe had just been sub-contracted. Like usual, they looked at him with pity, a little wariness, a little disgust.

This one was a tiny woman in purple scrubs. “Ben Mitchell?” she asked him by the doors with their windows. She laughed, like it was awkward. “Paul described you perfect.” _Paul,_ she said, like they knew each other so well. “Come with me, yeah?”

Ben followed her silently, not sure what he was supposed to say. He wanted to ask what was going on – if Paul was going to be all right. At the end of the day, though, he was the institutions’ son, and one night in a state-funded, strange-smelling bed was enough to remind him it was easier not to ask questions.

Someone seemed to have flicked the magic switch, though, because the doctor or whoever she was unleashed the floodgates as they walked by all the curtained-off beds. “He’s lucky, your – boyfriend,” she said, and Ben’s head smarted at the hesitation. He said nothing. “We weren’t able to save the kidney, I’m afraid, but they don’t think there’s going to be any other lasting damage.”

 _His…?_ Ben wanted to make her repeat it, but somehow he couldn’t think the words. This was what the surgery had been about, he realised, but it made no sense. How could they have broken something so deep? They must have kicked him so hard.

And they thought that damage wouldn’t _last_? What the hell were they on about?

“We’re putting him on the enhanced recovery programme,” the woman kept going. “That basically means we’ll be trying to get him up and about as soon as possible. People always think staying in hospital’s best, but there’s been studies and they all say it’s the most reliable way to get him back up to a hundred percent. The longer he’s here, the bigger the risk of him catching an infection.”

Ben didn’t really care about all this; he’d heard the same stuff a dozen times. He’d never known why they felt the need to tell you hospitals were nasty places to be.

“He won’t be able to move much for the next couple of days, though. And with his other injuries, he’ll probably need to stay in a little longer – at least until next weekend.”

Was there anything left of him? That was all Ben wanted to know, but of course she wouldn’t say.

“Paul also said that it was fine to mention that the police want to see him – about what… Well, about Friday night.” She was finally slowing down, hesitating a bit as they paused in the corridor. Her sensitivity training must have reasserted itself. Glancing at the wall, where there was a noticeboard and folders hung in a grid, she frowned. “They said they’d be here around lunchtime,” she told Ben, like he wasn’t taking this all in the way he was supposed to. “But that might mean anything, so it could be that your visit’s shorter than you’d like it to be. The consultant’s doing his rounds as well in about an hour, so…”

She looked at Ben, taking in his silence before she turned to the wall and pulled out the notes that she must have come for in the first place.

“He’s – he’s likely to be very tired,” she said more quietly, like she wasn’t sure Ben was listening anymore. “So he might well drift off before...” She leafed through the notes; glanced up. “You need to let him go if he does; he’s body’s still mending some fairly serious –”

“I just want to see him,” Ben said, which put her out of her misery.

They took the rest of the walk in silence, until finally, though they hadn’t really gone very far, the two of them came to a halt outside the curtains of one particular bed. “I’ll see if he needs anything,” the woman said, “and then you can go in.” Like it was a wall in front of them, with a door, and not a glorified sheet with some naff print on it.

She vanished before Ben could look at her, and he didn’t know what to do with himself. The scrapes on his hands hurt and his tattoo was itching. He rubbed a thumb over it, and the pain was somehow more bearable than the throb on the side of his head. The drugs were making him space out, he was certain; he couldn’t focus.

There was the sound of Paul’s laugh, muffled and in the wrong direction. Ben couldn’t quite believe it was real, and there was no one around to tell him whether or not he was hallucinating. The muffled sound of chat and rustling bedclothes didn’t seem any more right.

Then, however, his guide was back again. “I’ll be around if you need me,” she said, her smile dimming to be in Ben’s company rather than Paul’s, and Ben didn’t blame her.

“Cheers,” he said, and took the cue when she passed by to walk on into the gap between the curtains.

_Ben!_

Then he was inside.

_BEN!_

Ben couldn’t see, and he couldn’t move his head. The air was different around him, quick and blank and charged. His mouth was dry and his heart was pounding, miles to the gallons of blood he could feel banging through his heart, stealing his breath. His head felt out of sync with the rest of him, like his brain was off-kilter, kicked sideways, and it couldn’t tell any part of him to move.

He was so afraid. He could see Paul’s foot on the bed, but it could have been anyone’s foot, really. It wasn’t anything more than a twitching movement underneath the blue blanket and sheet.

Why was he wearing a blanket? The forecast had been for thirty degrees today, maybe more. There was air conditioning in the ward, Ben realised then, maybe the whole hospital. There had to be. He’d been wearing his hoodie since he’d woken up and still felt cold.

“Ben, look at me.” That was the first thing Paul said, and for a second Ben was convinced it was just another hallucination.

It startled him, when he realised it wasn’t. Involuntarily, he looked up, and he sniffed, his eyes itching.

Paul met his eyes with a sad, frowning smile – and he was alive.

For a moment, he looked just like himself, and Ben wondered what he’d been so scared of. They’d sat him up a bit, and it looked like he was doing the work rather than the bed. He had a gown on, but the pattern wasn’t so dissimilar from some of the dodgier t-shirts Paul was known to walk about in. His hair was pulled back and greasy, but that wasn’t different from some days after the market, when he’d go on a run and Ben would find him before he’d had a shower.

He looked like himself. He looked so much like himself that Ben smiled.

But then Ben’s brain caught up with his eyes, and it was clear just how much was also terribly, terribly wrong with Paul. The colour of his skin was off – he looked drawn; weak. There were tubes plugged into his right hand, underneath a blue wrap-around cast thing that covered his arm from wrist to elbow. The other arm had bruises, blue and yellow, peeking out and angry from the sleeve of his gown to his elbow. On his face, he had a swollen black eye and a split lip, a huge bruise around that, bigger than the thing Ben had around his own mouth.

“What the hell did they do to you?” Ben asked, the words coming out as a whisper as his smile sank far, far away. He was hardly able to keep the tears in his eyes. He could taste everything he’d eaten that morning.

Paul beckoned him over with his left hand, but Ben could barely focus on it. “Come on,” he said, sounding washed out but annoyed. “Granddad told me you’ve been up all night.”

Wiping his mouth, Ben made his way around to that side of the bed, sitting blindly in one of the visitors’ chairs away from all the tubes. He still didn’t know what to do, and in the end he could only cover his face with his hands and try to hide from the fact he was crying again, force everything back and hunch over himself.

There were few other sounds but him and on his drugs Paul seemed content to let him have his moment. When Ben looked up again and wiped his eyes, he was still there, watching sadly with one eye swollen nearly closed and the other not quite alert or fully open.

Ben’s throat burned from all the acid he’d been yacking up, and his arms felt stiff with it all, but he still brought them up, reaching out to the bed so he could take Paul’s hand.

“I’ll kill them,” he promised, squeezing his boyfriend’s fingers. That was allowed, wasn’t it? Even if they were over. He needed it, the charge between them. “I’ll kill each single one of them.”

“Ben…” Paul said hopelessly, shaking his head.

He looked disappointed, and Ben’s stomach flipped with it. “This is all my fault,” he tried to apologise, the words flipping out him, and he wasn’t sure where all the darkness inside him was aimed at anymore. It should have been him, half-murdered, missing an organ. It should have _all_ been him. “I don’t know what to say to you, Paul,” he said, trying to get it out. He kept hold of Paul’s hand and stared at it, trying not to squeeze too hard while he shivered. “It should be me and I’m sorry.” He couldn’t read what Paul was thinking. “I’m sorry, all right?” He tried to explain, “I should’ve listened to you, and I know, I’m sure we’re over, but I never thought…” Paul was frowning, staring at him, like he was confused, maybe? “I mean, I didn’t _think_ ; I never think, Paul, and I’m _sorry_. I can’t bear it, the thought of us splitting and you thinking…”

By the end of it, Ben ran out of steam and had to swallow. He didn’t know what to say, and he didn’t even really know what he wanted. Paul didn’t seem to have the energy to lay into him, but was just gently shaking his head. He took his hand away, but after a couple of moments’ silence he said nothing but, “Stop being an idiot, will you?”

Ben bit his tongue, not sure what he was supposed to do.

Paul rolled his eyes, tipping his head back into his pillow. “Is this what you’ve been doing to yourself?” he asked the ceiling. The skin around his bruises looked almost as blue as the pillow supporting his head. For a moment he shut his eyes, but then he seemed to find the strength to speak again. “Are you going to stop it now?” he asked Ben directly, looking at him with his good eye open wide. “If I tell you to drop it, will you drop it?”

He needed to blow his nose, but he didn’t have any tissues, so Ben sniffed again and wiped his face with one of his shaking hands. He nodded, though he didn’t entirely know what he was agreeing to. It was what Paul wanted, and he was still so afraid, so there really wasn’t any other option.

“This ain’t the first time, all right?” Paul explained, and Ben tried to hold himself together. “First time in hospital, but not the shouting. And yeah,” he added with a nod, “usually I’ve left it and every other time I’ve been fine.” He scratched his right hand with his left, looking down for a moment and still not quite pulling together a smile. “You should’ve seen my nan and granddad’s faces,” he muttered, his voice low. “I don’t think they believed… I don’t think they realised that this is what’s out there. That this is what drives people who don’t have what I have to do what they do.”

Ben’s head spun again, so he had to shut his eyes for a moment. He knew Paul meant people like him, but was this what he had always been frightened of? He wasn’t all that sure.

“And I remember how I felt, this time around,” Paul continued. “That fear and that – _shame_.” He swallowed, sounding disgusted. “Because you know that’s not what I’m about, Ben. I _won’t_ be.”

When Ben glanced up, the Paul he saw looked more serious than he had ever seen him. All of him looked heavy, like this was the stuff he kept right in the heart of him.

“It’s all right,” Ben said, because he’d got the gist. He took his hand again. “You don’t need to say it.”

But Paul only shook his head, his face hollow with bruises, and he was squeezing back. “I remember when you let them have it,” he said, like it was a dirty secret.

“It was stupid.” Ben wanted to take it back; he wanted to take it all back and have done nothing last night but watch a film and curl up in bed.

“Yeah,” Paul agreed, but he was smiling a strange little smile. He looked at Ben as though he could see straight through him. “But it felt – right, didn’t it?” he suggested, like he wasn’t sure he knew. “Like it was a relief…” He shook his head. “Just for that second when he _shut up_.”

Looking down again, Ben found he had the anger coming back, because he could still remember it. It was an old memory, really, but he’d been young when he’d figured it out – that if you didn’t fight back it only ever got worse. Worse and worse and worse, until you were left with nothing.

It wasn’t what you were supposed to do, though. Because of that, Ben could hardly believe it as Paul kept talking. He twined their fingers together, idly. “When it was obvious we were going to face it,” he started again, “it was like…” He repeated himself, “It felt like a relief. Like I – didn’t need to feel _guilty_ anymore, for telling you to be proud when…”

Ben’s eyes shot to Paul’s, and he searched for the words to point out there was _nothing_ Paul needed to feel guilty over.

But Paul beat him to it. “And – and I know I’m on drugs,” he stumbled on, before Ben could say anything, his fingers shaking where Ben squeezed them. “And I know it was reckless, and I know it was stupid.” He breathed in, breathed out through his mouth. “But I love you,” he said, meeting Ben’s eyes. “And this whole thing is stupid. I loved you for shouting back and I’d have loved you even if…”

Ben didn’t want to think about what ifs. He hadn’t thought this far ahead, but if you asked him later what he took away from all of this, he probably would have said that if they were going to get beaten within an inch of their lives for holding hands in the street, there wasn’t much point in trying to hide how they felt, was there? There was no way to make these people happy – no way at all – and he was sick to death of trying.

As it was, he was on his feet. With an ungainly lunge over the bed, he was holding onto the pillow and Paul was holding on to the back of his head, and he could smell the sweat and the glue and the iodine – whatever else it was they’d poured on Paul’s wounds – and he knew his breath stank of fast food, but he was kissing his boyfriend anyway, spare palm pressed to his chest. He tried to aim for the part of his mouth that wasn’t quite so bruised, but Paul didn’t seem to care, spreading his fingers around the back of Ben’s skull until their lips were closing on each other just as hard as they always did. And a couple more times, since it was quite hard to balance. Ben's head ached still, and Paul caught a bruise, but he breathed through it, concentrating on how good it felt to be here again, Paul’s teeth grazing his skin when he smiled; his cool breath rushing in a burst like laughter down his nose and onto Ben’s cheek.

When the kiss ended, Paul seemed to have found some energy, because he dropped his hand from Ben's head only to show him his fist, the knuckle of his ring finger raised and in Ben’s face.

“And anyway…” he insisted, like they were still having a row. As if Ben had any concentration left. “What d’you call this, Ben?”

It took a moment. Ben was hanging on to the bed now, his elbows dug into the fuzzy blanket while he half crouched and half kneeled on the floor. Gathering himself, he took Paul’s hand back between his, avoiding the dressing that was over his knuckles and brushing the _Ben_ with a thumb. The letters were clear, despite everything.

“Why have I got this written on myself?” Paul demanded. _If not to say I’m with you?_

He fell silent, and Ben listened to everything he wasn’t saying, staring at his own name.

Eventually, though, he got a hold of himself. “Hmm,” he said, glancing up to Paul’s face. “I dunno, mate.” The outrage in Paul’s battered expression was enough to make Ben grin. “It’s funny, though,” he added, dropping onto his knees so he could hold up the back of his own left hand, raising the knuckle for Paul to see. “I got this name done on mine as well. Some bloke called Pa-oul.”

Paul laughed, just once, and his eyes flashed like this was the most outrageous thing he’d ever heard. When Ben sniggered at him, though, he frowned his expression back into some sort of neutral bafflement. “I think you say it _Paul_?” he said, like it was something he’d heard a while ago, and wasn’t sure he’d remembered correctly. “You know,” he added, as though he was trying to remember, “like Paul Coker?”

“Do you?” Ben asked, holding back his grin as much as possible. He looked at his hand, then looked at Paul again. “And who’s he?” He was starting to think – to worry – that everything would be all right. “Is he a mate of yours or something?”

And then Paul cackled, and neither of them could keep it up anymore.

.


	4. Ben

The first time it dawned on Ben that things weren’t going to be easy was probably the day he met Jenny. It wasn’t too far into the week – Tuesday or Wednesday or Thursday, maybe – but Paul had been getting well enough to feel the boredom, despite spending most of his time asleep or high as a kite. He’d asked Ben to see if he could find his old handheld games console in among the junk under his bed, or else in his beside drawer.

“I mean,” he’d said, cringing when Ben had raised an eyebrow, “Nan goes in my room to vacuum, but I don’t think she needs some of the stuff down there in her life.”

“And I thought you didn’t have any secrets, Paul,” Ben had told him, and they’d shared an amazing little laugh, which had almost certainly scandalised Mrs Mazur and her hip replacement in the next bed behind the curtain.

Granted, Ben hadn’t really said anything to Pam since she’d gone off at him the day after everything had happened. By this point, however, he didn’t have any reason to believe there would be a problem, not now things had calmed down and the police had taken their new statements. Ben was hardly expecting a kiss on the cheek to greet him, but he rang the bell to the Cokers’ flat without any real trepidation.

Yet when Pam answered, she looked distant. “Oh,” she said. “Hello, Ben.” She was standing in the doorway, blocking the route to the stairs. The _What do you want?_ was implied.

“Er, hello, Mrs Coker,” Ben said. He was never certain he knew how to be polite, because it hadn’t been a requirement since he was ten years old – but he tried. “Paul asked me to pick up some of his stuff, so I was wondering…”

“Paul asked you to…?” Pam began, a little frown between her eyebrows. She didn’t look like she’d been sleeping. “What’s he missing? He shouldn’t have bothered you; I can bring it along tomorrow…”

“Oh, it’s no bother. And it’s – nothing, really.” For some reason, Ben didn’t want to tell her the details. Paul didn’t want his nan under his bed; it didn’t seem right to give her a reason to go there. “Just a couple of random bits. I don’t know if I could describe them. It’ll only take a minute,” he breezed on, even as the new scabs on his knuckles started to itch.

Pam frowned at him, leaning on the door as though she was caught between the choice to let him in or keep him out. It was hot – too hot for Ben’s head, really – and the Square was busy behind them. When Pam finally replied, Ben wasn’t quite sure he’d heard her correctly. “I don’t know if I think that’s a good idea,” was what she eventually said, bizarrely. “Do you?”

The thing was, as far as Ben was concerned, it wasn’t even an idea. He’d been asked to come and get something; he’d come to get it. What was there to think about? “I’ll be in and out,” he repeated.

“Oh, I know,” Pam said, nodding her head in a jiggle the way old people did, like she was a dog on a dashboard. “But,” she added once she’d finished, “well… We have to think about Paul’s privacy. He isn’t here, so we need to keep his room…”

“I know what’s in Paul’s room, Pam,” Ben said, before he thought better of it.

She looked startled; Ben tried not to physically cringe.

“I mean…” he covered, feeling the heat of some stupid blush on his face and his chest and, weirdly, in his knees. “I…” In the end, he didn’t bother saying anything else, though, because it was stupid, wasn’t it? The only reason the Cokers had started having him round in the first place was so that he and Paul could do each other in private. The part where they slept together had just been an extra Ben hadn’t realised would be so much of a bonus. “Never mind.”

“I’ll talk to Paul in the morning,” Pam said, for the first time of many, many more. “I’ll tell him you dropped by and you can…” And then she was closing the door.

For a few moments after that, Ben did nothing but stand there, trying to figure out what had happened. Did Pam think he was going to mess about with Paul’s stuff somehow? Snoop around or – what? Steal something? It didn’t make any sense.

What was he going to tell Paul about his games console? That was the real question.

Shaking his head, Ben turned to go – only to come to an abrupt halt when he realised there was a woman standing in the road behind him, watching him with a frown on her face. She was as tall as he was and skinny and she had brown hair, slightly mumsy clothes. It was a weird look for a stalker. “Yeah?” Ben asked her, wondering which of his skeletons she was connected to.

“Do you know…” she began, before swallowing like she was nervous. “Sorry,” she apologised, ducking her head and fiddling with her bag strap. “I didn’t mean to overhear, but – Paul Coker,” she said, like they were strangers and she’d read his name on a file. “Is he – is he in hospital? Is he all right?”

“Yeah, he’s getting better,” Ben told her shortly, because he didn’t think it was a secret. “Who wants to know?”

She didn’t answer him, the woman, just stood there in her flouncy skirt. “What’s wrong with him?” she asked instead.

As far as Ben was concerned, that was one question too many. He shook his head, deciding that whoever this ambulance chaser was, she’d got her high, so she could buzz off now.

As he started heading back to the Arches, however, the woman skirted around a couple of shoppers to tail after him. “Please,” she said, reaching out and nearly taking hold of his arm. “I need… I’d really like to know.”

“Not if you don’t tell me who you are,” Ben bargained, despite himself, pausing again in the road.

There was something in the woman’s eyes, then, on this hot day. There in the middle of the road, Ben saw it, even as she seemed keen to try and swallow the truth down inside her as far as it would go.

She was the right age, Ben imagined, and she was definitely pushy enough. “You’re his mum,” Ben accused.

The woman’s eyes widened, and she reeled back slightly, scared.

Though later he wouldn’t be that proud of it, Ben exploited the woman’s moment of vulnerability to go on the offensive. “You abandoned him,” he said, stepping towards her, his trainers crunching on gravel as he let out some of the frustration he’d felt with Pam. “When he was a baby. And now you come here and want to know what’s going on with him?”

“I didn’t abandon him!” Paul’s mum begged, a couple of tears appearing in her eyes. They sent Ben back on his heels. “I didn’t!” She put a hand to her chest, rubbing her collarbone like she was in pain. There was something in her expression Ben recognised, now she was admitting all of this. It was like that feeling of knowing something about yourself, some truth burning and burning and burning away inside you, while everything you had told you weren’t allowed to let it out – shouldn’t really have been feeling it in the first place.

“Here, come on, it’s all right,” Ben said quickly, his voice not as soft as it should have been.

Paul’s mum just shook her head, and Ben started to realise how odd it was they were meeting like this. “He thinks I didn’t want him, but I _did_ ,” she said. “You have to believe me…” She sniffed; wiped her nose, and still Ben recognised her. “I sent letters, and – I waited, and… And all I’ve ever wanted is for him to know who I am, but then it was his birthday, and I couldn’t get away, and like everything else all my plans fell apart…”

“It’s all right,” Ben told her again, despite himself. He squeezed her arm, awkwardly, remembering too late that his palms probably felt pretty nasty in this heat. The sun glared above them, and he squinted at it for a moment before making the decision to ask her, “What’s your name?”

“Jenny,” she said, smiling sadly at him. “Rawlinson. Or – most of the time it is, anyway.”

From what Ben could work out, she was a complete headcase. The thing was, he was a complete headcase himself, and for some reason he felt sorry for her.

“Paul was attacked last Friday,” he said, impressed that he got it out without stumbling over the words. Jenny froze, which made Ben spew the rest out before she could ruin it. “He and his boyfriend, they – there was a group of them. Paul – he, um, he had some serious injuries, so he’s in hospital recovering. They’re hoping he might be out at the weekend.”

If no one had told this Jenny that her son was gay, well, she seemed to take it all right. The story itself seemed to upset her, but she didn’t even blink on the details. “That…” She swallowed, like there was the same deep stabbing pain in her heart just like Ben got in his sometimes, seeing Paul in that bed. “That’s terrible,” she decided, and it was a fair enough point. “And his… His boyfriend – is he all right?”

It was not at all what Ben had expected her to say. Taken aback, he was smiling, something like a laugh escaping his nose. “Yeah,” he said, embracing the irony. “He’s doing all right, they reckon. Only needed A&E.”

The sound of the city behind her, Jenny frowned like she didn’t understand what was funny and didn’t think Ben should be laughing. “He must be worried sick,” she said.

And he was, though he tried to forget about it. Unable to maintain eye contact, Ben looked down, unconsciously reaching for his ring finger. He looked at the tattoo, which still wasn’t really healed but seemed better than the rest of him; smoothed his thumb over it and his knuckle scabs, which were almost as old. The soft black letters seemed more like a part of him every day, as much a part of his skin as the freckles on his forearms.

It was accurate, given how he felt.

Paul’s mum, it turned out, was by no means stupid. Else, she could at least read. “Oh!” she said after a moment. “Oh, I’m sorry.”

Ben didn’t know what to say to her. When he glanced up, it seemed like she felt for him – but she didn’t even know who Ben was, so he wasn’t sure how that worked.

“Here,” she said after a moment, smiling her sympathetic smile and squinting in the sun. “Why don’t you let me buy you a cup of tea. Then you can tell me your name, maybe.”

Snorting at her, Ben wasn’t quite sure how she’d managed to make him smile. “It’s Ben,” he said. “Mitchell.”

She gestured with her hand towards the Square, and he led them off towards the caff.

* * *

Somehow, the whole console fiasco was smoothed over. Somehow, when Ben went in to see Paul he was able to keep what had turned out to be a long, sordid secret of a younger, apparently even more hot-headed Pam Coker bullying Jenny out of the family after some supposedly unforgivable incident at the zoo.

Somehow, Jenny Rawlinson ended up invited round for dinner.

It would have been all right if it had been a different day. As it was, the next Tuesday, Ben wanted to throw bricks until everything was broken. Sharon had reappeared from Florida only yesterday, and she’d been on at him ever since, babying him like he hadn’t had ten days of nursing his wounds on his own. To make matters worse, Paul had been due for discharge from the hospital, and he _had_ been let out, but the consultant had been and gone early, apparently, so Ben had missed Paul's exit line. By the time Ben had gone all the way to the hospital and back, not having received this update, the Cokers were all back at home and Paul, he'd been told, had gone straight to sleep and wasn't taking visitors, so there was no way to know if everything had gone all right.

“So, Jenny; where have you been living?”

Frowning at him for a moment before she answered Sharon’s question, Jenny was the only one who seemed to notice his mood. “Well,” she said, picking at the salad that had come with the curry in a way that had no right to be familiar, “I’ve been on the Isle of Wight for the last few years; Manchester before that… I’d just finished an accountancy course and it was where I found work, but… Well, it’s a bit quiet down there, so here I am in London again.”

Sharon replied with a smile, “I don’t think there’s none of us who can stay away forever.” It seemed clear to Ben, though, that all Sharon’s breezy friendliness was just covering the fact she couldn’t imagine why anyone in the world would want to be an accountant. Because of course Sharon could run her own businesses, but heaven help anyone who wanted to do it properly.

“Ben’s mum left him in the lurch and all, you know,” Phil interrupted their little conversation, reminding everyone that he hadn’t wanted Jenny round. He kept eyeing her up like he didn’t trust her one bit, and this had all been Sharon’s idea, but Ben was still annoyed. Just because his dad hated Paul, it didn't mean he had to hate all the man's blood relatives as well. “Faked her own death when he was just a little boy.”

On Ben’s left, opposite his dad, Jenny’s eyes widened. She held her mouth closed, with clearly no idea what to say. Taking another spoonful of curry, Ben tossed his dad a glare. This was Paul’s _mum_ , and he was treating her like she was on remand.

It wasn’t right; she was all they had. “Jenny’s been trying to keep in touch with Paul for years,” Ben defended her, just then noticing how quiet the house was when the TV wasn’t on. “There was letters,” he explained.

“Been a lot of letters,” was all his dad said, tossing a look to Sharon.

Ben was not in the mood for this. “What’s he on about?” he asked her.

Sharon pursed her lips. Left out of the conversation, Louise sighed, like this was all very boring. At the end of the table by the window, Denny wasn’t even pretending, just silently playing on his game while he ate his way through half a tikka masala.

“What letters?” Ben asked again. He didn’t want any more secrets; should never have been keeping this one from Paul. That was part of what was hacking him off. It hadn’t seemed right, springing all of this on him when he couldn’t move, when he wasn’t at home. But that had left a window for Pam and Les to shut Ben out. Because of course Jenny had spoken to them; tried to clear the air. Now they knew Ben knew, and he had a feeling that in their eyes this wasn’t really allowed.

Sharon shook her head, apparently still keen for _this_ ticking time bomb to blow up in their faces. “Never you mind,” she told Ben, sharing a look with Phil. Then she threw her expression back into a smile. “We’re meant to be getting to know Jenny.”

No one mentioned how weird this all was, since they’d never had Pam and Les around. No one mentioned that it had taken Sharon seeing a woman her own age to act like Ben and Paul was something really happening.

Because of all of that, Jenny just looked around at them awkwardly, a bemused grin on her face. She looked slightly more comfortable than when she’d first sat down, but that wasn’t saying much. “Oh, don’t worry about me,” was what she told them. “I’m not very interesting.”

“Well, you can’t go around saying that, can you?” Phil exclaimed, like it was an hilarious thing to say. “What d’you want people to think?”

“ _Phil,_ ” Sharon chided him, before translating, “I’m sure that’s not true at all, is it, darling?” Then she seemed to use some sort of female x-ray-vision to peer right through Jenny’s face. “Did someone tell you that?”

“Oh no,” Jenny replied, shaking her head furiously. She stabbed a bit of lamb with her fork. “No one’s ever had to.”

Even Ben wasn’t so thick he couldn’t pick up on what _that_ meant. It hacked him off, to think of all these mums – his and his dad’s and Paul’s – all suffering from how blokes treated them. It weren’t right.

“What d’you do on an accounting course anyway?” Ben asked her, because that seemed to be the only thing she was proud of. He was still thinking, in the back of his mind, that he had to tell Paul something. If he ever saw him again, he needed to have a reason for hiding Jenny’s existence and he needed to be able to say something about her.

At the moment, though, all he had was that this Jenny was a bag of nerves. “Oh, well,” she said, looking around at all of them once again. “It’s mostly, um, adding things up, and…” She shrugged.

“Some people can’t add up, you know,” Louise told her, like she was trying to help. “That’s Ben’s excuse when he overcharges customers down the garage…”

“I don’t overcharge no one,” Ben snapped at her, because he didn’t. Much. And the last thing he needed was for _all_ of Paul's family to think he was good for nothing. “I ain’t an idiot.”

And yet – Paul’s mum was laughing at him; he could see it on her face. It didn’t seem to be in an unkindly way. “I suppose you drink your tea with three sugars as well, don’t you?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Ben demanded, wondering why on earth his dad had just sniggered at him as well. Maybe he wanted her to like him; that didn’t mean he had to let her walk all over him.

But Jenny just shrugged, looking around the table again, and then down at her food, like she was asking permission to make a joke. “Well, I…” she began. “Well, these last few days… I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve met you before.” She was smirking, a little bit. “I don’t know,” she hedged, waving her fork. “Maybe – every time someone’s come to fix my washing machine.”

“Oh,” Sharon added, like she was in on this joke as well. She laughed, and it was an odd sound. Genuine. “You mean that lad who tracks muck through your house, fixes one thing while breaking about three more and charges you double what he quoted you on the phone?” She laughed again, raising her glass of wine in Ben’s direction. “Oh yeah, that’s our Ben.” She winked. “We’re proud of you, sweetie.”

Ben wasn’t sure what on earth he was supposed to say – especially when his dad chimed in. “You forgot about him leaving the van radio on that godawful music,” he said, and for once it sounded like the dig wasn't about Ben being a fairy. “I blame that place in Essex.”

It had been a prison, of course. Jenny raised an eyebrow, but Ben didn’t know what to say.

Louise cut into the silence. “Aww, Ben…” she said, sat next to Dad and smirking just like him, the door to the hall behind her. “You’re a cliché, and you didn’t even know it. I can make you my summer homework.”

Certain that he couldn’t escape, Ben only scowled at her. Somehow he was unable to summon the anger he expected to feel. At the same time, it didn’t mean he was going to let her off the hook. “Yeah?” he asked her. “And I thought you was bunking off English these days.”

“What?” Lou snapped back at him like this was a betrayal, her eyes going wide as she sat up straight. “No I ain’t.” She looked around at Dad and Sharon, her eyes guilty as hell. “I ain’t bunking off nothing.”

Jenny tittered, and it went right up her nose. There was another pang of familiarity, somewhere in his chest, and Ben couldn’t help smiling with her. “I think you remind me of my brother,” she then said.

It seemed to surprise her that she’d said it – just as much as it surprised the rest of them. Ben wasn’t sure how to respond, and Louise was blinking. Their dad grunted, as though this observation somehow earnt a bit of his respect.

When it was clear that no one was going to say anything, Jenny continued, talking to Sharon, who was frowning. “Jez – he, he used to do double glazing and conservatories,” she said. She didn’t seem to have that much practice in telling the story. “Until ’94, when he – fell off a ladder in Enfield. That was how I met Laurie and the Cokers.” She trailed off, her mood gone as she looked down, “They did the funeral.”

Sharon was watching her, taking this in. She glanced at Ben, and it seemed like she was telling him to keep his mouth shut. Ben didn’t need to be told. Then she glanced at Phil and said, “It was a bad year, ’94,” as though that meant anything.

* * *

If things had stayed that difficult, it would have all been fine. It would have been complicated, but Ben would have told Paul eventually, and it would have been all right. As it was, of course, things didn't stay that difficult: Paul found out and everything got worse.

Leaving Paul’s that morning, a couple of weeks after all this had started, Ben ran into Les, who told him he needed to have a bit less cheek and a bit more subtlety, for reasons that weren’t clear but presumably involved being able to see Paul when Pam was out.

Ben was barely listening, still worrying about what Paul had overheard and regretting the fact he was leaving at all, whether or not it was likely Pam would pop back for lunch.

He didn’t take the Cokers’ spare keys, but Paul at least had his phone now, so Ben hoped the worst was going to be over. The doctors had said back in the hospital, back on the days when there had been hours listed when Ben could visit Paul as much as he liked, that as soon as Paul started on his feet his strength would return fairly quickly. The operation had taken a lot out of him – more than the physical part of him that Ben didn’t like to remember he’d lost – but he wasn’t going to be bed-ridden forever.

The thing with his mum though… It was clear, talking to Les as he left the flat, that neither Pam or Les knew that Paul knew, and it didn’t sound like they were in any rush to tell him. Ben hadn’t wanted to, not like this, but now the cat was out of the bag he was going to have to do something about it, wasn't he?

He liked Jenny; that was the thing. He wanted Paul to like her as well.

It was all a mess.

When he made it back to his house, the woman in question was even sitting there, having tea with Sharon.

“Oh, hello, darling,” Sharon said, standing up as she took the mugs over to the sink. She was still acting guilty about jetting off to Florida while everything had been going on. Ben didn’t really care. “Is everything all right? You were out very early this morning.”

“Yeah,” Ben replied shortly, not sure why he owed her an explanation. “Paul wanted to see me while his nan was out, so I went round.”

“Oh,” Sharon replied. “Well,” she said, smiling and nodding at Jenny, who had her own awkward grin. “We were just going to have some lunch at the Vic. Your dad’s upstairs. You’re welcome to join us, if you like.”

“Nah, you’re all right,” Ben replied, raising an eyebrow at Jenny to find out if there was something going on he should know about. She shook her head. “I need to get down the Arches, anyway.” It was only Monday, and he’d done some hours yesterday to let off steam, but whether or not he had any future in Coker’s anymore it was probably best to try and keep their own business afloat. “I only came back for the keys.”

“OK,” Sharon agreed. She was heading to the hallway. “Give me a second and we can go by the caff together, yeah?”

Ben tried not to roll his eyes as she swanned off to check on his dad. It might be she’d pay for his sandwich, so…

“She’s only trying her best,” Jenny said after Sharon had gone, taking a bite out of a digestive.

Ben looked at her, the half-finished plate of biscuits on the table, and sat down. “Well, she could try a bit harder,” he said, helping himself to a chocolate hobnob. He hadn’t known they’d had hobnobs in the house. “Or less,” he suggested through oats. “She’s doing my head in.”

Shrugging, Jenny finished her biscuit and wiped the crumbs off her hands. “Well, what do you expect?” she said, scathingly. “She’s trying to look after you.”

Ben grumbled. He liked Jenny, because she didn’t try to mother him, but it could get annoying. For a start, he couldn’t even tell her he liked her for that, because it would only make her self-conscious about the fact she’d never had any practice mothering anyone, and then she’d get on one of her gloomy streaks, where she didn’t say much of anything and looked at you like you were threatening to kill her pet cat.

She was interesting, really. Ben didn’t know how much of this stuff was genetic, but sometimes, in her moods – the few of them Ben had seen over the last week – she was so recognisable. There were things in Paul, Ben sometimes thought, that didn’t make sense when he was just Pam and Les’s grandson. There were dark clouds that hung above him; there was that itch inside him to go places bigger and brighter than Albert Square. Ben didn’t much care either way – he didn’t trust most of the world and he had a feeling his family would find him wherever he went – but he knew Coker and Sons wasn’t it for Paul, not forever. And all of that stuff – Jenny seemed to be about it as well.

No wonder Pam hated her. It was probably all the bits of Paul that weren’t Laurie.

In any case, Ben didn’t flatter himself. He had a feeling Jenny liked talking to him for exactly the same reason – his connection to her son, if not to this random dead brother she hadn’t mentioned again. But he didn’t mind. Mostly, he wondered what she saw.

“Ain’t you gonna ask how I made it into Castle Coker?” Ben asked her, because she’d been trying to get in and all, and he thought she wouldn’t mind the story.

Jenny smiled tightly, like she hadn’t wanted to pry. “I assume Paul got hold of you. That’s what you said, isn’t it? How is he?”

The question took Ben aback. Why hadn’t Sharon asked him the same thing? “He’s on the mend,” he said, grateful to be able to say it, “as far as that goes.” For some reason, the question was so straightforward it seemed easy to tell her the rest. “He’d probably be better if he hadn’t heard me mouthing off yesterday about Pam keeping me out, and you…”

“Oh, Ben…” Jenny began, wincing as she rested an arm on the white tabletop.

“Well, I didn’t know he was there, did I?” Ben defended himself, wanting to glare at Jenny but not quite able to meet her eyes. “Nobody told me he can move about by himself now – and, and I’ve been at the end of my rope with all this stuff.”

“Well, is he all right?” Jenny demanded. Her frown was intense. “What did he say – about Pam; about me?”

Ben sat back from the table, thinking. “He said he was all right, but I don’t know, do I?” he told her honestly, now just feeling worried again. When he’d left, Paul had been over his moment of weakness and had been planning to have a little sleep. He’d promised to text Ben when he woke up, and Ben was going to share his new number with a few people, so he didn’t go completely mad on his own. “He’s had a day, but you can’t get over all of that in a _day_ , can you?”

With his mum coming back from the dead, Ben had a feeling he was supposed to know how this would work. Jenny was looking at him as though he would know better than her. The fact was, though, this was a completely different situation. Kathy… Ben didn’t hate her; he sort of loved her again and had always thought she’d loved him. It was hard to bury that feeling. At the same time, she trumped pretty much every single other absentee mother, while Jenny didn’t seem to have done too much that was wrong. And yet all Paul had ever known was that she didn’t care.

“I think he needs to talk to you,” Ben suggested, because that at least seemed like a plan. “But you need to give him space, right?” he insisted, finally looking Jenny in the face. “He needs to have the option to get out of there.” That, at least, was what Ben had always needed: the opportunity to cut and run. He didn’t do well otherwise.

Jenny nodded, like she was shoring up her courage. She swallowed and it made her look young. “Maybe now he’s moving…” she said. “You could ask him…? We could meet outside somewhere.”

Maybe it was too soon. Ben didn’t really know; all he knew was that Paul wasn’t happy where he was and this was one way to give him something he didn’t have. “Yeah,” he said. “We can try. Once he can take the stairs.”

.


	5. Paul

Now he had a phone again, Paul had a feeling Ben expected him to make like it was 2009, and eke out the pennies of his credit on painfully crafted text messages. What he actually did was plug the new handset into the wall, have a sleep, have some lunch, have another sleep, and then go on an adventure to find the Cokers’ WiFi key. His nan was back on the stall and his granddad was reading the Walford Gazette.

“Oh, hello, Paul,” his granddad said, peering over the back of the chair. The newspaper rustled. “What’s that you got there?”

Paul held up the slightly embarrassing, but still smart device. “New phone. Just to tide me over.” He explained, “Ben got it for me.” He said nothing about how, watching for some look of surprise.

It didn’t come. His granddad nodded, maybe acknowledging or maybe not that neither he nor Nan had considered the fact it might be nice for him to have some contact with the outside world. Paul knew he could have asked, of course, but he hadn’t really thought about it. He hadn’t been thinking too many thoughts, for the past couple of weeks.

“You need to be careful,” was what his granddad said, as Paul came round his chair to find the router and started tapping in the key. “About having Ben in the house. Your nan…” He shied away from saying it outright. “Things are a bit tense.”

It was time to start thinking, Paul knew. Until then, though, he thought he had an excuse to blunder around with wide-eyed innocence. “Is this about my mum?” he asked his granddad.

Now, Paul had a plan, he really did. Ben had stuck a post-it with his mobile number on the front of the new phone’s box, and Paul was planning to text him with a link to ChatApp, to say there were no excuses now and he had to join the modern world. And then he was going to see if he could get his old account connected to the new phone, and he was going to have a very nice afternoon.

The thing was, it was a bit difficult to keep his mouth shut, since it seemed his mother wasn’t some irresponsible booze-cruise runaway after all. It was the sort of thing, he thought, that someone might have told him years ago, so that he didn’t have to overhear it in the nastiest way possible, with Ben going off on one.

Now the cat was out of the bag, of course, Granddad was staring at him. He looked horrified, and the plan hit a snag.

Paul gave it up, sitting down on the sofa despite the pain in his lower half. All right, he’d had his moment with Ben his morning – and he’d been having his moments since yesterday. But this was his _family_. They could talk it out. He’d taken pills; he’d be feeling numb in a moment.

“I overheard Nan and Ben talking,” he explained, because it sounded better than saying he’d heard them have a steaming row. “So I know she’s on the Square. And I know she didn’t leave like you always said she did.”

His granddad sighed, folding the newspaper closed and setting it down on the table. “You have to understand, Paul,” he said, sounding awkward. “We didn’t know her very well when she found out she was expecting you.” He paused, but when he realised that wasn’t at all enough explanation, he kept going. “Laurie… Your dad threw himself into the relationship without a care in the world, but Jenny was still rattled by… Well,” he added, taking Paul into his undertakerly confidence. “Her family had been bereaved not long before. Her brother, Jeremy… It takes a good while, sometimes, to get over a shock like that.” He shook his head. “Her parents were in the shop to discuss arrangements; your dad took your mum out to have a bit cake and… It wasn’t very professional.”

“It sounds like he was being nice,” Paul said, always willing to defend his dad, even if it did seem a bit reckless to start dating someone who’d come to see you for a funeral. But sometimes these things were unexpected, weren’t they?

From the look on his face, Granddad didn’t agree. “We tried to tell him, but he was convinced…” He sighed, before laughing just a little. “Six months later, of course, there you were on the way and Laurie couldn’t have been prouder. Poor Jenny,” he interrupted himself, “the pregnancy seemed to bring it all back up to the surface. Then she had you and…”

“What?” Paul asked, giving himself a twinge as he leaned forward. This sofa wasn’t as comfortable as he remembered. He thought he understood what his Granddad was saying, but it all seemed like such a shame. “Are you saying she got depressed?”

The flat was filled with silence, the noise of the Square outside and the tick of the mantelpiece clock. Paul didn’t really know what it had been like in the nineties, but he’d heard that people didn’t talk about this stuff back in the day. There’d been stigma.

Was that the reason his mum had left? Stigma? What a waste.

It didn’t seem fair – and it didn’t seem like Nan.

“It was a terrible time, Paul,” Granddad was telling him gently. It didn’t sound like he wanted to tell this story, but now it was here he wasn’t shying away from it. Paul was looking over to the window, caught on the question of how the people he’d thought were the most generous in the world – his nan and his granddad and his dad – how they could have let her go. Why hadn’t they found the time to look after this person who’d given birth to him? “She wasn’t all that much older than you are now," the story continued, "and you’d find her sitting with you in your little cot, watching you cry and doing nothing about it. And I tried to talk to her, but your nan…

“Nan what?” Paul asked, turning back. The thing was, he could almost imagine, and he didn’t like it that he could. She could hide her head in the sand sometimes, Nan, even if she didn’t mean anything by it. Other people’s problems were always easier.

His granddad looked like he didn’t want to say anything. He glanced at his empty mug of tea; the plate on the table where there must have been a sandwich. “Your nan was worried about you,” was what he said, uncomfortable. “Took a bit of a set against Jenny – and I couldn’t… It wasn’t easy to know who to blame.”

Paul knew the rest, he was pretty sure, but he had to ask. “And then what happened?”

Again, Granddad paused before saying, “None of us had your mobile phones in those days, remember.” He looked up, like he wanted Paul to acknowledge that before he explained. Paul couldn’t help but feel the weight of the device in his hand. He couldn’t really imagine what it would be like without it; his whole world. The past week had been bad enough. “She was getting on top of it, Jenny,” he granddad continued the story, “and she wanted to take you out, just you and her. But she was late getting back, and we were worried sick.”

Looking down, Paul pressed the button and watched the minute tick over on his phone’s lock screen. It would have been easy to worry, he supposed.

“It turned out – she said – she’d taken a bad tumble on the curb. Grazed up half her arm,” Paul’s granddad added, as though he could still remember it, “and knocked you over in your buggy. There was a…” He winced. “In the end she went back to her parents and, well, there was this boyfriend she’d had before Laurie…”

 _Went back?_ Was that what they were calling it? Paul tried to take it in, but he couldn’t quite manage all of it. His granddad was looking at him like he wanted forgiveness, but Paul wasn’t honestly sure he had it in him. He didn’t remember this broken arm – had never heard about it before. He had a broken arm again now, and maybe it was the same one, but it wasn’t all that bad. Arms broke all the time, didn’t they? In primary school there had always been one kid or another with a cast and a sling, and he was pretty sure they hadn’t lost a parent each time it happened.

“She _went back_ ,” he said, because the phrase kept rattling around inside his head. “What, like she was a dodgy DVD player or something? She was my _mum_ , Granddad,” he reminded him, unable to summon any anger, just exasperated by it all. Though that was likely the drugs. He thought he should have been angry. “She was a human being.”

“We were worried about you,” his granddad defended himself, tapping his fingers on the chair arm. “And it was for the best. She weren’t doing well.”

“But that don’t explain why you thought you had to _lie_ to me,” Paul shot back. “All these years,” he complained, annoyed, “and you never said a word about the fact she might have regretted it – that she might have wanted to know me.”

That was the thing, wasn’t it? It wasn’t so much that she’d left. He’d never known her, so he’d never known any different and he’d never had anything to lose. But she’d wanted to come back, and Paul would have liked to have known her; _that_ was what hadn’t been allowed. The decision had been taken out of his hands, despite the fact that she was _his_ mother. She wasn’t even Nan and Granddad’s daughter in law.

“We didn’t know –“

“I know about the letters, all right?” Paul interrupted, standing up with his phone. It was shaking in his hand, and the creeping feeling of mistrust, like he was being played, that was winding its way up his back again. The living room felt darker now than it had been in the pre-dawn light, when Ben had snuck his way in and reminded Paul that he still had some control – some power. Now that was all eking away again, and there was nothing for Paul to do but get out; retreat to his room, where hopefully no one would disturb him. “I know she tried to get in contact,” he told his granddad, who looked ready to get up from his chair. Paul pointed at him, feeling the betrayal in his veins. “So don’t even try it.”

“Paul!” his granddad called after him, as he ran away as fast as his missing kidney would let him.

* * *

Climbing back into bed, Paul felt shaken. His head was light with too many drugs and too little food, the empty bowl of soup and sports drink on his side table no comfort at all. He was sure he could manage more complicated stuff by now, but no one wanted to push it and unless he was going to sneak out for a takeaway he didn’t get a say in that either. Apparently quite a lot of his insides had taken a battering, and his killer physique had barely protected him. It was hell working out his insulin levels; he missed vegetables.

He had his phone now, at least, but that was little comfort either. The headboard behind his back reminded him of his childhood, sat at home and wondering when it was going to happen, that he’d start to fancy girls and care about what bras they wore under their school shirts. That was all any of his friends could talk about in Year 8; they’d share pictures on their phones like the harassing little ticks they all were. He’d been more interested in the older boys getting changed for PE, but it was only at home on his own, at 12, at 13, that he’d started to realise that made him different. He always had been a bit slow.

Now he was here again, not sure how to talk to Nan and Granddad, and not sure how to understand where he fit in. Everything he’d ever been told about himself – it wasn’t true.

There was only one response to that, wasn’t there? It was the same one he’d always had. Get on and front it out. No one needed to know his life had taken _him_ by surprise as well.

‘ChatApp,’ he wrote to Ben, because he’d planned to. ‘No excuses. I’ll spend your credit on voice calls. XX’

The message was brutal and fake, he thought, but there wasn’t much else he could text. _Fake it till you make it._ That was the point, wasn’t it? The insecure people of this world always found themselves sniffed out.

Forcing himself through the motions, Paul found the app himself and went searching for the FAQs while it downloaded. It didn’t look like there was much of a chance of him getting anything transferred over, but that was all right. He was able to log in to MateGate and update the world with the fact he was back online, and put up the number that was apparently now his in case anyone wanted to get in touch.

It was a mess, his online profile. There were twenty-five dozen notifications, mostly telling him to get well soon. At least half of them seemed to be a response to Louise Mitchell, of all people, tagging him in a post that said he was in hospital and needed some love (hashtag stronger than hate; hashtag pride; hashtag team Mitchell; hashtag we’re thinking of you, Paul). Rebecca Fowler had liked it, along with a whole load of other random teenagers. Oddest of all was Abi Branning, who’d liked that and one message Jay had written: _Ain’t the same without you._

Paul thought it was Jay, anyway. He’d deleted his old profile after all the paedo business, but this one had popped up around the same time. The name was wrong, and the picture was of a Ferrari, but he didn’t post much, whoever he was, so Paul kept him.

Ben was not on MateGate at all, so presumably he hadn’t seen any of this. It was likely for the best.

Clicking the heart on all the posts he could find, Paul threw out a couple of emojis at the particularly sweet ones – because he was a huge flirt, wasn’t he? – and then he watched while his ChatApp filled with people who wanted to say hello.

It was almost overwhelming, watching them pop up. Paul wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. This was him, back in the world – and yet he still felt somewhat disconnected.

There was only one contact he’d put into his new phone so far, so there was only one message that appeared with a name at the top. Paul clicked on that one.

_How many people are on this thing? It’s found the bloke who sells tyres! Ben._

For some reason – maybe the light-headedness – it made Paul laugh, and then he was just sitting in his room on his own, laughing. You could always rely on Ben not to play it fake.

‘People like to chat,’ Paul wrote back to him, thinking that if he was talking to Ben then he didn’t need to worry about neglecting everyone else for a couple of minutes. ‘It’s what they do instead of fixing cars.’

 _I don’t just fix cars,_ Ben replied almost immediately. _I do loads._

Of course he did. He watched the TV and ate eggs and had family drama. He was a simple soul, really.

 _How are you, anyway?_ Ben wrote again. He had a habit of failing to cover himself in text. Instead of coming out off-hand, all his concern was laid out blunt in front of you. _Has they said anything? See you got the phone working._

‘I’ve spoken to Granddad,’ Paul told him, trying not to think too hard about it, nor how he’d exiled himself to this small, stuffy room. ‘Nan’s not home yet. But I’m feeling better to be connected.’

It wasn’t really a lie.

And then he realised he’d missed a trick, so he added, ‘Xxx.’

It took Ben a little while to reply after that, though the app said he’d got the message. This was why Paul loved texting, wasn’t it? Everything that went unsaid. Ben was typing, the app told him, but it took a long time, and in the end all that appeared was, _It’s been a while._

Paul smiled, and wondered if it was possible to live in _this_ little bubble forever. ‘I’ll let you know when I can take the stairs,’ he tapped out, definitely feeling like a teenager. ‘You might need to abduct me.’

* * *

It was difficult, thinking back to the day before. It seemed so long ago, after it happened, after Ben came round, but Paul found himself thinking it over again, once the ChatApp messages were written and the inability for his phone to run anything more complicated became clear.

It had all been part of the plan: the plan that involved him going to the toilet on his own. He’d been feeling stronger, and he knew he should’ve asked for help, but he hadn’t wanted to. He’d wanted privacy, and that meant making the decision, getting up and walking to the loo without anyone else.

In his head, Paul was back where he was before. He was sitting up in bed, just like he had been. It was only his nan in the house and the doorbell rang – and he knew then that it was time to make his move.

There wasn’t be a long window by any means, but Paul reckoned he had about two minutes, maybe five. First, his nan would have to go downstairs and answer the door. Then she would have to say hello, and undoubtedly get whatever gossip that was new from the person who’d come by to visit, even if they were only selling dishcloths. Then there’d be some dancing around about whether they wanted to come in for a cup of tea, and so on and so on…

Everything ached, but Paul dragged himself to his feet. They weren’t familiar after all this time, but they took him, just about. He’d been standing up a few times over the last couple of days; he knew he could.

Breathing through the twinges in his muscles, he moved forward, step after determined step. He knew his nan was going to kill him, but that was why he was doing it without her knowing. They’d said in the hospital he should try as soon as he was able, that it would always be an effort. He wasn’t supposed to push himself, but he knew himself pretty well. He was still well within his limits, standing on his feet.

He would make it to the bathroom; he was determined. He would have a piss; he would wash his hands – and then he would tell his nan he could do it.

It would be something concrete – something that would prove that this would be over eventually. It would be something to tell Ben about when he finally stopped by.

When he reached the door of his bedroom, Paul paused for a breather, huffing in and out and rubbing his hand over his stitches to reassure himself they were still there. He still felt empty on the inside, but that was all in his head.

It was strange, as far as Paul was concerned, how little Ben had been by since he’d come back from hospital. He hadn’t seen him at all – he’d only turned up a couple of times when Paul was asleep, his nan said; everything had been busy at the Arches. It was probably because Ben had taken so much time off the week before, which was Paul’s fault, really. But he still didn’t have a phone and it was hard to know what was going on.

Glumly, Paul gathered his strength again, reached an arm to the door, and made it out into the flat’s living area. This was for Ben; Ben and him.

There was his nan’s voice downstairs, reminding him to be quick.

But then, just as he reached the bathroom, there was another, and it immediately pulled him over towards the stairwell.

“Look, I just want to see he’s all right, yeah?” It was the same voice Paul had just been thinking of. “I won’t even wake him up.”

He sounded annoyed, and a bit desperate, and it took a couple of moments for Paul to work out what he was saying.

“I said no, Ben,” his nan replied, the sound of it echoing in the stairwell. Paul wondered whether the bruise on Ben’s mouth had healed yet. “He needs rest. He’s asleep."

“But I know you’re _lying,_ ” Ben snarled at her, and it seemed to come from nowhere. Or… “Even in the hospital he weren’t sleeping twenty-four hours a day, but now every time I come by you say he is! At breakfast, he’s sleeping; mid-morning, he’s sleeping; lunchtime; dinnertime; now; later… I ain’t _listening_ to it no more; I want to see him.”

After a moment’s pause, Paul’s nan responded in a cold voice. “You step one foot inside this house,” she warned him, the words measured, “and I will be on the phone to your probation officer quicker than you can blink.”

“You –”

Paul’s heart squeezed with horror; the same horror that was there full in Ben’s voice. He still didn’t quite understand what was being said; nor why. What had Ben done? Why was his nan acting like this?

“I can’t believe you’re threatening me,” Ben said, and it sounded incredulous. Of course, his fear was only fuelling the aggression in his voice, the way it tended to. “I _knew_ you was faking it,” he accused, sounding almost like he was amused. “All this time, I knew it. No one’s that _nice_ , not like you’ve been pretending.” He paused; scoffed. “I shoud’ve realised – you can keep it up for _years_ , can’t you?”

“I think you want to look at yourself in the mirror, young man,” Nan said, sounding like she wasn’t even fazed by the nasty tone in Ben’s voice. To be honest, it didn’t sound much like she was really there. “Think about what Paul needs. He needs his family around him, a time like this. Stability. He doesn’t need your mood swings.”

Ben laughed, and Paul could just imagine it, even as his hands started to shake. “Is this how you did it to her, then?” he said, and suddenly Paul was lost. “Froze her out? Bullied her into leaving? What she ever done to you?”

“She broke his – !” Nan exclaimed, then suddenly covered her mouth with her hand, as though this was a secret or something. Who they were talking about, anyway, Paul didn’t know. It was all to do with him, apparently, but he was completely in the dark.

Ben snorted, and it sounded mean. “Yeah, I heard about that,” he said. “He was better in a month; three more and you had her bags packed and out the door, convinced she weren’t fit to be around him. Paul’s dad – now, I’m improvising here – he was what? Too scared to say nothing about it? Or – did he even know you was involved? You probably span him the same line, didn’t you? She was a worthless cow; she didn’t care about him; she didn’t want him.”

“Don’t you dare talk to me like that! You know _nothing_ –”

“I know well enough, _Pam_ ,” Ben was then shouting through the doorway, and Paul jumped, even though he was refusing to figure out what this all meant; how it added up. “I know what you did and I know you want to do the same with me, but I ain’t going to let you.” His words ran on, all of them loud and violent, and Paul wanted nothing more than to shake him free of them. “I ain’t going to run off. I ain’t gonna let you make him think I don’t want him. You can’t keep him locked up forever and I ain’t some scared little nobody you can boss around.”

His nan started saying something, but it wasn’t loud enough or welcome.

“You _stole_ his mum from him!” Ben yelled, drowning her out, and the pain in him… For who? Paul? Paul was rooted to the spot, clutching the soreness in his side. “She wrote him letter after letter and you lied about it for _years_!”

His nan slammed the door, then, after a pause, and there was the sound – the shudder through the house – of Ben kicking it, swearing in frustration. For a moment Paul was motionless – cold at the top of the stairwell – but then somehow he found himself moving to the bathroom and locking the door before he heard the noise of his nan climbing back up the stairs.

When he came back to himself, just a little, his side was burning. Paul eased himself over to the toilet and sat down, still needing to go but not in the mood to bend and pull his trousers down. He thought he should cover his face with his hands or something – but those hands were trembling, only warm enough because they were wedged between his knees.

He stared at the sink, the toothbrushes in their blue toothbrush mug. The room smelled old-fashioned and herbal; a bit like wet towels. Today, it wasn’t comforting.

Paul felt like he wanted to cry. He felt like he was somewhere else – the hospital, maybe – and everything around him was a dream. Maybe he hadn’t woken up yet; maybe he was still getting his head kicked in. This couldn’t be real, whatever it was. He couldn’t believe it.

There was a knock on the door. “Paul?”

He jumped, sucking in a breath that sent a shiver right through him. It was his nan. It was just his nan.

She knocked again. “Paul? Is that you in there? You should have said if you needed some help. I could’ve got your granddad up from downstairs.”

“I’m fine,” Paul told her, his voice filling the room. It sounded remarkably level; warm. His heart was racing. “Thought I’d see how far I could get on my own. I’ll be out in a minute.”

She paused for a moment, before graciously accepting. “All right,” she said. “Why don’t I put the kettle on?”

It would buy him time, going to the loo; that was all Paul could think. Time to protect himself somehow, or figure out a plan. He wanted to get out of the flat, but there was no way he could make it down the stairs. He just… How could it be true?

 _My mum..._ he thought. _Ben and my mum._

His whole life seemed cheaper, now that he knew. He could only think of the times when it had just been him and his nan and granddad, chilling out at home or going off on holiday. He’d never thought it was odd, spending that much time at home – nor else that he’d never had that many friends. Nan had always said everyone loved him, but most of his friends at school had been girls, and he’d never been that fussed to spend time round their houses reading magazines and gossiping about the straight boys in their year. That had even been before college, when he’d been stuck without the heart to tell them what he’d got up to with a _very_ drunk and somewhat stoned Dan Dagenham after the Year 11 leavers thing, all of which would have tainted Dan’s heartthrob image.

But what if that was all a lie? What if they’d made him his way, Nan and Granddad, cutting him off like they’d cut off his mum, until all he could cope with was one night stands and unavailables and the ones who wouldn’t take him away from the only people he had meaningful relationships with? What if they’d meant to do it?

Why _had_ he felt the need to always bring Ben back to the flat? It had his bed in it, which was convenient enough, but Paul knew it wasn’t entirely normal to conduct their whole relationship under his grandparents’ noses. They could have hung out at the park, or walked down to the river, got back late and stayed out of the way.

God, he felt so _stupid_. Why hadn’t he seen all of this happening? Why hadn’t he tried to track down his mum? He’d wanted to – when she’d never come to Dad’s funeral, he’d wanted to give her a piece of his mind – but Nan had needed him to keep the house together, and granddad had been working long into the night. He’d only been little.

Of course, it was always possible he’d got the wrong end of the stick. As Paul began the torturous task of going to the loo, that was the thought he kept coming back to. He couldn’t help but wonder what was more likely – that it was all true, or that he’d got the wrong end of the stick. It couldn’t be as bad as Ben thought; it never was. And his nan probably _had_ thought he was asleep…

The idea wasn’t all that much of a comfort.

* * *

Later, Paul asked his nan if he’d heard the door, expecting her to tell him how Ben had come by, and she’d thought Paul was asleep, and so on, and so on.

She didn’t, though. Instead, her face went all pinched and she turned back to the sink. “Oh, it was no one,” she said, not lying very well. “Just a sales call. Did we have any overgrown trees needing trimming, can you believe it? When we don’t even have a garden…”

Paul didn’t reply. _No one._ That was what she was saying?

Nan left him on the sofa, not long after that, to go and check on Granddad, and in the shock of it all Paul found himself reaching for the landline from the side table, slipping the handset into the pocket of his hoodie. He didn’t know what he was going to do with it – order pizza or the fire brigade or what – but it felt more like safety than having nothing at all.

When his nan came back, he told her he was going to have a sleep.

“Yes,” she scolded. “You’ve probably tired yourself out, haven’t you? There’s no rush, Paul.”

Still, he was allowed to walk back to his room without help. Then he had the door shut again.

Taking stock, Paul tried to look on the bright side. He had a way to reach the outside world and an empty bladder. He wasn’t all that tired, really. He didn’t know Ben’s number by heart; it was in his lost phone and he was the biggest idiot to walk the earth. But he was taking everything one step at a time.

Once he was back in bed, it took twenty minutes of breathing and staring at the display for Paul to think about calling directory enquiries. He could have smacked himself.

“Hello?” he said, interrupting the operator as they tried to waste time and run up the bill. “I’m looking for the number of Mitchell’s Autos, Turpin Way, Walford.”

Did he want to be connected? No he didn’t. It was only four numbers to remember anyway; Paul had forgotten how landlines made things so easy. And he wanted a few minutes back to himself, to figure out what he was going to say. It was Sunday; Ben wasn’t likely at the Arches… But then he wasn’t likely anywhere else.

In the end, his mind went blank, and he had no idea and no plan. He pulled his duvet over him before he dialled, and he sank almost entirely under it, suddenly afraid his nan would be listening at the door. The room was gloomy, with the curtains half-drawn, and warm.

 _“Yeah?”_ was how Ben answered the phone, because of course that was how Ben answered the phone to his dad’s business.

“Ben?” Paul said anyway, just in case it wasn’t. “It’s me.”

 _“Paul?”_ he replied, suddenly sounding urgent. There was the sound of furniture, like he was sitting down or standing up or something. _“What’s happened? Are you all right?”_ He paused, like he was waiting for Paul to reply, but then couldn’t hold it in, continuing, _“I’ve been trying to see you for days, I swear. I can’t seem to… But never mind all that, just… Paul, are you there?”_ he finished, and tears pricked Paul’s eyes.

He didn’t know what to say, or how to say it. “I need to see you,” he came up with, and he was glad his voice stayed strong. “Without…” He didn’t know whether he should maintain the fiction that he hadn’t figured it out, or not. In the end, he didn’t even try, just burrowed into the covers. “Nan’s got a run to the wholesaler’s tomorrow; she usually goes around 5. Granddad’s been sleeping late on his pills. 5.30 – you should come about then. Don’t – don’t ring the doorbell.”

 _“But how am I going to get in?”_ Ben asked, blowing straight past the question of why Paul was inviting him so early. It sounded like he was already planning to pick the lock, which was more fine by him than it should have been. All the same, it was probably best that Ben didn’t get himself sent back to prison.

Paul squeezed the phone in his hands, wishing they were closer. “Don’t get excited,” he mocked. Ben laughed, and Paul thought it was possible – just maybe – that they could do this. “I’ll work something out.”

.


	6. Ben

It might have been that Paul forgave his nan everything, in the days that followed him finding out. Ben didn't pry. It didn't matter anyway: whatever happened, Ben knew Paul would forgive her eventually. It was just the sort of thing he did.

What he did know, and kept up with, was how Paul had talked to his granddad. Eventually, it seemed, his granddad had talked to his nan as well; they’d all had some words, apparently, and the next weekend Ben was invited around to the flat for real.

As usual, it turned out there was yet another side to the whole story. Supposedly Jenny, who’d kept quiet about this particular part of the saga, she’d been seeing some bloke before Paul’s dad, and his nan was convinced they’d never fully broken it off.

Ben felt a bit daft for not pushing Jenny harder, to get all of this out of her before, but he wasn’t entirely sure how he should have gone about it. Paul softened towards his nan’s protective instincts, and Ben with him, though Paul said he still felt bad for his mum, and wanted to talk to her.

“So what does she look like, then?” Paul asked, when the drama seemed to be done. He’d pasted a smile on his face, like it was fine if he could still make a joke. “I should probably know, shouldn’t I? In case I see her in the street.”

Pam and Les looked at one another, and Pam picked up their mugs to take them to the sink, but Ben didn’t pay it any mind. “Here you are,” he said, pulling out his phone. There was a selfie of him and Jenny that Ben had taken yesterday in the caff. He’d ordered egg and chips while Jenny had ordered an egg salad, and Ben had thought Paul should have been there to decide the argument about which one was better. Because obviously he would have said salad, but then he’d have stolen more chips than lettuce bits, so Ben would have won. “She’s been saying…” he added. “She’d like to meet you.”

It turned out, though, that what Ben didn’t know was that Jenny had been by before. “That’s…” Paul said, looking at the pair of them and their eggs, not listening to a word Ben was saying. “That’s her with the flowers, from the other week. That’s – that’s…”

He took hold of the sofa arm, clambering to his feet. Watching him, Ben paused, not sure what to do and left there holding his phone.

“You said she was _blackmailing_ you!” Paul shouted over to the kitchen, clenching his fists. He scoffed, like he couldn’t believe it. “You stood there and said it to my face. _Was_ she?” he demanded.

It was the first thing Ben had heard about any blackmail. Drifting back over, Pam said something Ben didn’t quite catch, murmuring apologetically and looking down towards the back of the armchair.

But Paul was shaking, and Ben shivered on his behalf. “That was my _mother_ ,” he said, like he couldn’t believe it. “To think… It’s one thing,” he insisted, “all this stuff happening when I was a baby, but this is _now_ , Nan.” He sounded like he was at the end of his rope. “This is you lying to me _now_.”

Stuck in the corner of the sofa, Ben knew he’d never felt more awkward. In his armchair, Les looked almost as bad. Pam was hovering behind him.

“What if she’d never come back? What if I’d never seen her again? What if something worse had happened, and that was all…”

“Paul, please,” Pam said, her eyes closed. “Think of your stitches.” She said it softly, like she was praying for some sort of help, but Ben could only wince, because it was not the right thing for her to say at all.

“Think of my stitches?” Paul shouted, holding his side but clearly not thinking about them all that hard. “My mother comes back after twenty years too afraid to; I treat her like she’s dirt – and you want me to think about my _stitches_?” He breathed in and out, hurt and shaking. “How could you let me, Nan? How could you?”

“It was for the best…” was all Pam seemed able to offer, all teeth and a stare that wasn’t meeting anyone’s eyes. Ben felt bad for her, almost. She was worried about Paul; anyone could see that. What he didn’t know was why she thought she had to have the monopoly.

“To think I thought I could understand… I don’t even _recognise_ you anymore,” Paul told her, sounding disgusted, and, when he glanced down behind himself, Ben recognised his cue to get up and follow him as he stormed off to his bedroom.

He was getting better at storming, Paul. He’d been saying in his texts that he was fine with walking, now, and didn’t get too much pain in his side anymore. The thing just tired him out. He kept not waking up until midday – and he hadn’t tried the stairs.

It seemed like today was the day.

“You have to get me out of here, Ben,” he was saying, awkwardly pulling a sports bag off from the top of his wardrobe and stiffly going through motions to pack it, grabbing things blindly from his drawers. “I can’t stay here anymore. I’m going mad.”

“Here, I’ll do that,” Ben said, as Paul threw in a bottle of hair product – and his penguin – and started trying to zip the bag closed. He seemed happy to let Ben take over, storming out of the door and round the U-turn to the bathroom, clattering about and storming back with two handfuls of bathroom bits, clutched together.

Ben unzipped one of the leather bag’s side pockets; the bathroom stuff went in. He unzipped the other side, and Paul quickly shuttled all the pills and leaflets and diabetes bits from his bedside table into its depths.

“Where are you going?” Pam asked when they emerged, sounding desperate. Ben hung back, a little nervous that things were going to get nasty. Pam wasn’t moving from her spot, though, just like Les wasn’t moving from his chair. “Paul?” she asked again when she got no reply. It was like her heart was broken. “Where are you leaving to?”

“Somewhere not here, Nan,” was all Paul said, while Ben escaped to bag-carry down the stairs in front of him. “Somewhere _not here_.”

It seemed like Casa Mitchell it was.

* * *

They made it home to find Jenny and Sharon were having tea again. “It’s all such a mess,” Sharon was saying. “She’s been my best friend since we were children.”

“But it was so long ago,” Jenny said back, neither of them noticing as Ben came in through the door. “Can’t we ever become different people?”

“Jenny,” Ben said, not sure whether he was warning her or saying hello. He sort of wanted to warn Paul, because whatever the plan was it wasn’t this – but there wasn’t time for all that now.

Turning back from Sharon, Jenny immediately jumped in her chair to realise who was coming behind him.

Ben raised his eyebrows; raised the bag in his hand. “Meet Paul,” he said, tossing a glance over his shoulder.

Sharon looked just as startled to see them, as though they might care what Michelle’s latest drama was over in the land of sunshine. Jenny stood up out of her seat, clearly uncertain about what she was supposed to do.

Naturally, Paul was capable of solving about any and every bit of social awkwardness. Ben could tell that he was startled, just for a moment – and that was fair, since neither of them had been expecting this. He looked at Ben, and Ben frowned, trying to tell him that it was probably better to get it over with. Then, of course, he was just crossing the distance between the door and the blond wood chairs, pulling Jenny into a warm and back-clapping hug.

“Are you…?” he said, clearly with no plan of how to finish that sentence. He looked his mum up and down, and Ben was slightly terrified by how kind he could be. This had to be all Jenny had ever dreamed of. “I can’t believe I said those things to you,” he apologised. “I’m so sorry; I’ve never spoken that way in my life.”

“It’s… It’s OK,” Jenny told him, smiling a little. She looked like she was going to cry. Ben had to glance away. “You didn’t know who I was,” she added. “I heard – are you all right to be walking around?” She moved out of the way of her chair, which also conveniently took her out of reach of more hugs, Ben noticed. “Here, come on; sit down.”

Paul looked like he was going to complain. He glanced at Ben, as if to say that he was still fine and this did not at all mean he was going over his limit. Nonetheless, he sat down, breathing out as though it was actually a relief to be off his feet.

The silence after that was awkward. Sharon was the one who broke it, catching Ben’s eye and nodding behind her to the living room. “Ben,” she hissed, making it clear she thought they should leave Jenny and Paul alone.

Almost immediately, the weight of Paul’s stuff was heavy in Ben’s hand, and he felt self-conscious. He didn’t really know what he was planning to do with it – or with them. He hadn’t thought as far ahead as there being anyone home when they’d come back. It had just been what Paul wanted, getting out.

Now that he thought about his dad, Ben knew that Paul was pretty much doomed to the sofa, if he was even allowed to stay at all, but it seemed defeatist to leave him there without a fight. What was the point, really, of getting beaten to a pulp if they weren’t allowed to sleep in the same bed? It wasn’t like they could risk much with Paul’s kidney anyway, though he said the cuts were doing better now.

He looked at Paul, raising his eyebrows to ask if he wanted him to stay. Paul clenched his jaw and rolled his eyes, as if to say he should probably do this on his own, whether he wanted to or not.

With that bit of reassurance, Ben tossed a smile at Jenny, because it was almost like he cared that she got what she wanted too, and then he was following Sharon out of the kitchen.

“Best leave them to it, yeah?” Sharon said when they were in the hallway, shutting the door behind them.

Ben looked at her, a little suspicious. She seemed skittish, and she hadn’t said anything about him and Paul turning up out of the blue, despite the fact it had been weeks since she’d last seen Paul at all, and never that she’d last seen him in this house. “Is that it?” he asked.

Sharon looked confused.

“Do you even care that he’s walking around again?” Ben asked her, a little louder than he might have intended. He was still a little shaken up from the row at the Cokers’ – but it was obvious what the problem was here, wasn’t it? “He was in hospital two weeks ago,” he reminded her. “You could pretend like you gave a…”

“Oh, Ben, of course I care,” she said quickly. “It’s wonderful,” she added, wrapping an arm around his back and kissing him on the head. Yet she still seemed distracted, looking back to the kitchen where Ben couldn’t hear what was being said. “I’ve just been caught up in all this with Michelle, haven’t I?” She smiled, and her eyes were more make up than any expression Ben could read. “Are you and Paul going somewhere to celebrate?” she added, looking down at the bag in Ben’s hand.

He’d forgotten how in Sharon’s world there was always the money for a mini-break. “Oh, right; yeah – no…” Ben told her, looking at the bag himself.

The thing was, he’d have done it for Abi, wouldn’t he? But then – he needed his money in case he and Paul actually found somewhere of their own and had a deposit to put together. They hadn’t talked about it since before, but even if things with Coker’s didn’t pan out there didn’t seem any reason why living together wouldn’t still be on the cards. It wasn’t the same situation at all.

“Paul’s had a row with Pam and Les,” Ben explained to Sharon, looking up again. “About you-know-who in the kitchen.” She nodded, getting it. “I thought he could stay here, you know…” He trailed off, “Just for a bit.”

“Oh, Ben…” Sharon replied, sounding a little bit shocked by his gall. She was frowning, like she didn’t how to say what she wanted to. Or maybe that she didn’t want to say what she had to.

Honestly, at the end of the day, did it matter? “You know what, Sharon?” Ben told her. His muscles were going stiff, but he tried to keep his right hand from clenching. “Just leave it out, yeah? I’ll get some of my stuff; we’ll go somewhere else.”

He sidled past her and the yellow paint, not able to look her in the eye. She thought she was his mum – Ben knew she did – but it was still only his real, lying, sneaking mum who’d ever made any effort with Paul. Accused him of having Ben over when he was on the outs with Abi, mostly, but at least she’d tried. Ben wasn’t sure why he bothered with this family anymore.

“Your dad’s not _well_ , Ben,” Sharon said, before he could get round to the stairs.

He stopped, staring her down, and his hand with Paul’s name on it was still holding his things. “And who’s fault’s that, Sharon, huh?” he asked, his voice probably too loud. “Because it ain’t mine. And it ain’t Paul’s neither.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Sharon demanded just as loudly, glaring and looming in her vampire-black clothes.

Ben scoffed at her, because he wasn’t frightened anymore. “You and him,” he said, “you’re just as bad as each other. I always knew Dad hated Paul.” He nodded his chin upstairs, where the Mitchell in Chief was sleeping, presumably. “And I thought maybe you was different, but you ain’t, are you? You hate what he stands for, just as much as _he_ does.” Ben put his hand on his chest. “You hate what he makes me stand for.”

“Ben, that is a _horrible_ thing to say,” Sharon snapped, like her anger was all she had to defend herself. She had her hands just in front of her, like she was holding back from throwing them in the air.

Ben wasn’t sure why she bothered. “You don’t get it, Sharon,” he snapped right back at her, all his hate heavy and hot in his gut. “I’ve seen the faces of people like you and I don’t _care_ anymore.” He promised her, “I don’t.”

Scoffing at him, Sharon tongued one of her teeth, and Ben wondered why the argument hadn’t been won the way he’d thought it would be. “Fine,” she said, like she was hurt, now holding her arms out wide. _See._ “Have it your way. Let’s move someone new into this house while your dad is feeling weak and vulnerable. Because _that_ sounds like a recipe for a happy household. And with _you,_ ” she added, clapping a hand towards Ben, “so obviously the big man now, so obviously over being beaten in the street by thugs… You’re in a perfect position to put up with your dad’s sniping, aren’t you?”

“Sharon…” Ben said more softly, when he realised that he had actually hurt her feelings – and because she was hurting his.

But she just sniffed, laughing at him. “You’re a joke, Ben,” she said, a little nastily, but maybe that was fair. “All of you; you’re a joke.” Even so, Ben wasn’t quite sure who she meant – him, his dad and – who? Billy? “Something happens and you think everyone’s your enemy – but we’re not, Ben. We care about you.” She looked sincere, but it was still hard to believe it. She kept trying, “I _care_ about this family, and as long as Paul is part of that, of course I care about him too.”

The thing was, Ben heard the words, but he didn’t feel them at all. Hearing Sharon even say Paul’s name made him angry again, and then he was just shouting, “Well, then, why ain’t you ever asked how he is?” 

Sharon stared him; breathed out. “Because for the last week,” she shouted back, “all you’ve done is bite me and your dad’s heads off. Or ain’t you noticed, in that little world of yours?”

That wasn’t right, Ben thought, fuming, staring back at her. At least, he didn’t think it was right. He didn’t really know, did he?

As the silence hung, it seemed as though neither of them knew what to say. Then, like a particularly bad punchline, the door to the kitchen creaked open, just behind where Sharon was standing. She turned around; Ben peered past her back.

Appearing completely unfazed by _his_ bit of drama, Paul put his head around the door and told Sharon, “Umm… Jenny and I were going to go and get a coffee.” He glanced at Ben apologetically, then added, “She’s said I can stay with her as well, so…” He paused, letting them fill in the blanks. “I don’t want to cause any problems.”

“Oh, don’t be daft,” Sharon was then saying, not missing a beat with the smile back in her voice. “Of course you can stay here, darling.” She tossed a glance at Ben, telling him not to push it, before looking back to Paul and adding, darkly, “Hope you enjoyed your first row.”

* * *

There was something very strange about having Paul in his house.

After it had been decided, Paul had had the good sense to go out for a coffee with Jenny anyway, though Ben had wanted nothing more than to make some sort of gesture, just to prove to Sharon he was serious.

That would have been petty, though, probably, and hadn’t seemed necessary once his dad had come down to ask what all the racket was about. The kitchen door had not long closed, so it wasn’t particularly straightforward to explain. Nonetheless, in one of the most anticlimactic moments of Mitchell history, Sharon had just said that Paul was on the outs with his grandparents, so would be staying for a couple of days, and Phil had replied, “Right.” Then he’d paused for a moment and added, “And what are we cooking for tea?”

It seemed as though Phil’s strategy was going to be to pretend nothing was happening at all, which was actually better than Ben reckoned he could have hoped for. All the same, everything had happened so quickly. It was surreal.

“It would be nice, you know,” Ben decided. “If he could acknowledge you at least.”

They were sitting on the sofa, not watching whatever it was on TV. The news? Paul didn’t need that much more rest than usual, he said, and had been asleep until lunchtime, apparently, so by unspoken agreement they were staying downstairs for as long as possible. It helped avoid any awkwardness.

Denny had long gone to bed, though was probably playing on his computer. Louise had gone upstairs ‘to talk to her mates’, though not before grilling Paul on every gruesome detail about his missing kidney. (“And will it, like, grow back?” No, of course it won’t, Lou, you idiot.)

Sharon and Ben’s dad were in the kitchen, where they’d been all evening, either having the most intense conversation they’d had in their life or finding something to do that wasn’t sitting with him and Paul.

Paul himself seemed pretty relaxed, even if he was sat right back on the sofa so the cushions could support him. He had a leg up and an arm stretched out, and Ben had to keep stopping himself from collapsing into the crook of his shoulder. It was the first night they’d had to themselves, really, since everything had happened – and it was in his house. He didn’t have to worry about whether he’d forgotten something, or be on his best behaviour. It was odd.

“I dunno,” Paul said, in response to Ben’s thoughts about his dad. “I think he’s acknowledged me enough.” Ben watched as he bobbed his foot, crooked over his knee, content to do nothing but listen. “I passed him the salt when he was cooking; he told me not to answer the phone when it was clearly my nan calling again… I mean, that involved him talking directly to my face.”

“I suppose,” Ben agreed. It was pathetic, really, but it was a move in the right direction. “And I suppose I’m proud of him, a bit.”

“It was nice of him,” Paul said, as though it was half unexpected and half not.

It had been a funny moment, at the end of the day. Just as Phil had been throwing the last of dinner together, Sharon on the pasta and him on the sauce, the phone had rung. Phil had answered it, and it had been Pam trying to track down Paul. His response had mostly sounded like he was annoyed that Pam would remind him Paul was in his house. “Yeah, he’s here,” he’d said. “But nah, he ain’t coming back until he’s good and ready. Get off my phone.” And then he’d hung up.

“He’s got a thing about _mums_ …” Louise had said across the table, waiting to take her food next door, like she was some sort of sage.

The phone had rung again – and then, like he wasn’t even thinking about it, Phil had spoken to Paul. “Don’t pick that up.”

Thinking back on it, Ben could be amused. “Not exactly rolling out the welcome mat, though, is it?”

Sitting where they were on the sofa, Paul looked at him down his arm. Ben looked back. “Is that honestly what you expect from him?”

Taking the point, Ben slumped down into the sofa and finally let his head fall back against Paul’s arm. He wasn’t supposed to care anymore, was he? “No,” he accepted. “I suppose not. But I…” He trailed off, not knowing what he thought.

“But what?” Paul asked him, nudging him with his knee. It wasn’t fair, really, how the right-hand side of him was all broken – hacked-out kidney; fractured arm. Something had happened to his knee as well, they said, but compared to everything else and the black eye that hadn’t quite yet faded, no one ever seemed to think it was worth bringing up. The left-hand side of him, the side Ben was sitting on – the side with his name on – that kept suggesting he was free to do whatever he wanted.

Reminding himself that he’d only just found the nerve to stick the back of his head in Paul’s elbow, Ben tried to think. What was it he wanted?

“I just think,” he said, looking at Paul then glancing down at his boyfriend’s chest, all the pain he knew was still lower down. “I just think I want it all to mean something, what they done.” Most of him, he was healed now, but Paul was going to be living with this forever.

“The police are pursuing their leads,” Paul said, like they didn’t both know that was going nowhere. Ben had gone down for their stupid identity parade, but he hadn’t seen anything.

Besides, he didn’t think he meant it like that. “What I’m saying is,” he said, turning on the sofa cushions, “that we’re both here, living our lives.” He looked around the living room; the burbling report on Rio. “Shouldn’t it change something, all of that what happened?”

“You want it to have changed something?” Paul asked, sounding serious. He wrapped his arm around Ben’s shoulders, pulling him a little closer. “Ben, think about what you’re saying. What d’you want it have done? All that violence?”

Looking at Paul’s face, Ben thought about it, and his thoughts didn’t end up anywhere he liked.

At the end of the day, it was weird having Paul in his house, and it was weird because Ben knew – now they were here – that both his dad and Sharon would make certain the kitchen door creaked as loudly as possible before they came out to say goodnight. He knew there would be no awkward dancing around, just his dad going upstairs while Sharon told them to make sure the house was safe for the night. They’d wilfully ignore the whole situation, and part of him would hate it, but the other part of him would recognise that this was what his dad’s approval looked like.

There was nothing holding Ben back, really, apart from his own sense of what was right, and what was that feeling? If it was the same thing – if it was anything even _related_ to what had made those boys in the street hurt Paul – he couldn’t bear the thought of it anywhere inside him.

Turning into the sofa, Ben took hold of Paul’s shirt, his hair, and kissed him. He wasn’t sure why; he just felt like it. He didn’t stop after his first go, either, but kept shuffling as Paul shuffled as much as he could to meet him, their legs tangling up together where Ben was kneeling on the seat cushions. The breath between them was wet and heavy, and Paul seemed to be into it, so Ben dug a little deeper, opened his mouth to find the tongue waiting to meet his.

It had been a long few weeks, after the spate of good nights they’d had at the Cokers'. Ben had a double bed, though, and a mattress that had been bought this side of the millennium, so he was thinking this night might be better. Paul was holding onto his shoulders, clutching tighter and tighter as Ben tried to prove he knew how to kiss after all this time.

Eventually the kitchen door creaked its tell-tale creak, but there was time – of course there was time – while his dad and Sharon murmured a few more inane bits of nothing. Ben pulled back, detangling and still feeling all of the effects. Watching Paul blink, looking dazed, he wasn’t able to keep the grin off his face.

They were sat in their respective halves of the sofa by the time the kitchen lights went out, and Ben had just about managed to turn his grin into some sort of frown by the time Sharon popped her head through the door. Behind her was the noise of his dad carrying on to trudge up the stairs. “Check the doors and turn out the lights before you go, yeah?” she said, while Ben nodded at her, saying nothing.

Paul’s head was turned towards her as well, so Ben wasn’t sure what his expression was.

Sharon’s was amused. “Good night, you two,” she added – and was gone for a second before her head popped back. “Oh,” she tacked on pointedly, “and your dad said to remember you’ve got Denny and Louise in the house these days.”

After that, Ben found it very, very hard not to laugh. Ignorance, this was not. This was…

Paul turned back to face him, his face a picture, but it was only after Sharon’s footsteps had vanished upstairs and the hall lights went out that he hiked a thumb over his shoulder, raising his blue, broken arm, and asked, “Am I hearing things, or was that basically a suggestion we could do whatever we wanted – as long as you don’t keep your sister up with your moaning?”

At that Ben did laugh – quietly, though. He tried to look serious, but was mostly just thinking about it. “ _Me_?” he demanded, aiming for scandalised. Because _yes_. Yes it was. “What about _you_?”

Paul scoffed, leaning his elbow back on the sofa cushions. “Yeah, all right,” he said, like he wasn’t having a word of it, but was also trying not to laugh, “let’s believe that fiction, shall we?”

Tossing a glance at the TV, Ben shook his head, because it was possibly true but was mostly a gross exaggeration of what he was like in bed. Completely unjustified – though it was probably worth checking. “Are we watching the end of this?” he asked, trying to remember where the remote had gone. He still wasn’t sure what was on.

“Nah,” Paul said, biting his lip as he watched him scrabble around.

* * *

It was Paul’s turn to wake up that night.

He did it a lot more subtly than Ben ever did, so he’d clearly been awake for a while by the time Ben joined him. It was quiet, and both of them had cooled down from earlier; the air was cool on Ben's face and arm.

Paul himself was turned away, curled up on his good side with his back bare and bony where Ben could see it, the covers supported by both of their bodies. He didn’t seem to be doing anything, just looking over to the window where the streetlight never failed to find the gap in the curtains. It was dim and dark orange now, because it was well after midnight, but it still gave the impression that the aliens were coming by any minute.

For a little while, Ben wasn’t even sure Paul was awake, but then he would move his arm or sniff, and it didn’t seem like he was asleep.

“Here, you all right?” Ben asked him, in a whisper, reaching out to touch his spine.

Paul did some sort of double-take, but then rolled over to face him. He was in silhouette against the window, so it was hard to make out his expression. “Sorry,” he said, in his own quiet voice. He sounded pretty down about something. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“Come on,” Ben told him, because he could fairly easily imagine what this was all about. It was nice – of course it was – to be back here again, but that didn’t mean the reasons they were weren’t chasing them. He put his hand on Paul’s shoulder, brushing his thumb to his collarbone and squeezing until he felt the muscle twitch. “It’s fine.”

“I miss my nan, Ben,” was what Paul said, looking up to meet Ben’s eyes. As if it wasn’t obvious. “And I know she’s only down the road, but…” He shrugged, barely moving the bedclothes as he looked down again. “I don’t even know if she exists.”

Ben didn’t know what to say. He shuffled closer, hoping three-week-old stitches would hold as he dragged Paul into the crook of his arm.

As it was, the man kept talking, so Ben was presumably doing all right. “I don’t think I even know who I am anymore,” he admitted, his voice soft and quiet. “It’s like… Was I ever even a person to her? Who might need more than…? She and Granddad are pretty much all I’ve ever had and I can’t bear it, you know?” He sniffed. “The thought that that was maybe what she _wanted_. Why would you lie like that? To a _child_?”

Ben tried to think it through, because he couldn’t have said – not off-hand. He ducked his nose to Paul’s hair and breathed in the smell of him, trying to think, the way Paul always did.

“I think you’d have to ask my mum,” he came up with, then sighing because it wasn’t really an answer. “She always says she feels terrible about leaving, but…” Obviously, Ben tried not to let it annoy him, because there was nothing to be done now – but… “That didn’t stop her, did it?” It wasn’t always that easy.

Paul tilted his head up, sympathy all over his face, which wasn’t fair, because this wasn’t about Ben.

Shaking his head, Ben counted to one and carried on. “She says it was Gavin,” he explained to Paul. “And she says she had no choice. But that ain’t it.” Her voice fell flat, every time she said it. “She just… People are weak, I reckon.” He didn’t know how else to explain it. He squeezed Paul close. “They do this stuff out of weakness, and then the shame of it… It’s easier to carry on than face up to what they done.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Paul agreed, and Ben liked to think he didn’t sound bitter. Ultimately, Ben liked to think he _had_ faced up his mistakes. “I just…” Paul shook his head, like he wasn’t sure. “I don’t understand it.” And he said it like it was a flaw in him.

Ben sighed. “That’s ‘cause you ain’t never been weak,” Ben told him. His heart tightened in his chest, and he wished it wasn’t 3am or whatever it was and he could say it a bit louder, because it almost looked like Paul didn’t believe him. “You ain’t about faking it, or having things your way. You take whatever gets chucked at you and you keep on.”

For a moment, Paul said nothing, tensing inside Ben’s arm like he was uncomfortable. “That ain’t true,” he said. “And even if it was, it’d only be because…”

“No, it ain’t,” Ben insisted, finding Paul’s hand to hold because he liked it, seeing how there was a part of him, just his name, that was always touching this man of his, keeping close. “It’s ‘cause you’re you.”

Again, Paul shook his head, only the once and slowly. His fingers between Ben’s were shaking.

“You don’t get it, do you?” Ben insisted, because it didn’t seem like he did and that was – that was all wrong. “All this time you never cared what people thought of me – and you… You didn’t even care what _I_ thought of me. Of us.”

There was something to be said, after all, for the fact they were having this conversation in his bed, with all their clothes littering the floor. Paul seemed to realise it, huffing out a breath as a smirk crossed his mouth.

“Somehow, Paul,” Ben told him, because he was on a roll now, “you can see past all this rubbish that gets to the rest of us.” This was going somewhere; he was sure it was. It was worth it for Paul’s look of disbelief. “And… And that’s just you, ain’t it? There’s nothing I could’ve done to make you see past the stuff that I had going on, not when I couldn’t see past myself. It’s you. You… You won’t have it, you know? And you don’t care.”

Paul was frowning, and in the low light Ben thought there might even have been a couple of tears in his eyes.

 _Good._ That was all absolutely fine, as far as he was concerned. “I don’t know no one like you,” Ben finished, honestly, and he wanted Paul to feel it. “All you are is – brave, and… And I still wish I could _be_ like you. Every day I look at myself, and how you are is what I want to be.”

There wasn’t much to say after that, for a little while. It was almost embarrassing.

 _Say something,_ Ben wanted to insist. _Say something. Say something._

In the end, though, Paul sniffed, smiling without his teeth. “You don’t want to be too much like me, though,” he said, forcing the joke out through a croak. _Or just say that._ “That would be really…”

“Oh no,” Ben agreed, just smiling and smiling to know the message had gone through. “I don’t fancy dressing like a backing dancer for Justin Timberlake.”

Paul laughed, abruptly, and it was almost too loud for this time in the night – but who the hell cared? Really, who did? “Careful,” he said. “You can’t hold out on playing Bugsy Malone forever.”

“Yeah?” _I love you,_ Ben thought. Had he figured that out yet? “Watch me.”

.


	7. Paul

The mysteries of the Mitchell household were not quite so mysterious, in the end. Despite the fact they only had one bathroom, where the sink seemed to be forever covered in Denny’s toothpaste and sample sachets of BB cream, the reason why they hadn’t all killed each other became clear in about a day. Essentially, the house was bigger than it looked, and they spent as much time as possible out of it. They ate together by choice or not at all; someone was always coming and someone was always going.

As a result of all of this, the house was somehow both a relaxing place to be and a frenetic nightmare. In the mornings, Paul was on bedrest – if fully clothed, in case of prying eyes – and he got to experience all of it, the voices travelling up the stairs. Sharon flapping while she tried to get Denny out the door and on to his mate’s house; Louise bending the ear of anyone who’d listen to hit them up for cash. Phil and Ben arguing about the football, which they seemed to care about in some sort of strange, abstract fantasy-football way, rather than supporting any particular team.

It was interesting, and Paul was starting to only doze until eleven, so there was plenty of time to watch them from the outside. Jay had somehow got wind of the fact he was staying in the place and was sending him tips every now and then.

_Get your own towel and keep it with your clothes. It ain’t worth it not to._

_Don’t try change the channel when it’s about houses in hot places._

It seemed to keep him amused.

Monday lunchtime, when Ben came home, they had the house to themselves. His dad was at his support group. Paul was feeling refreshed; Ben was smelling of engine oil and sweet tea; they had leftovers done in the microwave and Ben didn’t leave again until nearly four in the afternoon.

This was not repeated, but the next couple of days were nice anyway. Ben seemed to worry that Paul wasn’t enjoying it – “I know it ain’t as nice as staying at yours,” he’d say, when he forgot he’d already said it. “We don’t… Well, we don’t really sit down and talk in this family. Not about normal stuff.”

And Paul tried to explain that he liked it, but he didn’t do a very good job. “I like having the time to myself. And the space. Just for us, you know? It’s nice having it normal to just be us.”

Of course Ben didn’t get it. He was too fond of hurling his emotions at anyone who would have them, of having them pried out of him. He liked to think out loud. Paul hadn’t ever lived like this, though, with Ronnie and Roxy and Jack and Billy and Honey appearing and vanishing with all their little children, like the Mitchells were actually a sea that filled half the Square, tides pulling them from one house to the other. Paul was barely a blip on their radar, but it was different and it was calming, sometimes, the crowd of them.

Then there was a day Denny and Sharon were home for lunch, so Paul and Ben had sandwiches Ben had bought from the caff. That was when Paul realised he was going to need a new job, or at least something to tide him over, because the charity was starting to pinch.

“I’m thinking I’ll give the new Blades a try,” he told Ben on the way to the Arches, once they’d done their bit for domestic harmony. They’d left, basically.

Ben looked at him, still munching his way through the end of his sandwich. “Yeah…” he said sceptically. “But ain’t it some 50s strip joint place now? D’you think they’re hiring blokes?”

Paul laughed. What could he say? He’d worked in near as bad. “Well, I think they still do hair.” He thought it through, as they reached the playground and Ben looked at him expectantly. It was a really nice day, Paul realised. He was still missing calls and fielding texts from both his nan and granddad, but he was working it through and it was a really nice day. That morning, even, in the mirror, he’d been convinced all his bruising had gone. “I’ll have to convince that Belinda that her brand needs some East End edge, won’t I?”

Raising his eyebrows, Ben let that one sit. “Don’t push yourself, all right?” was what he went with, changing the subject and giving Paul a quick kiss before he ambled backwards into work. “I’ll see you later!” he added, like he didn’t have a care in the world.

This was what getting better felt like, Paul thought – and with a buzz on his phone he had a text from his mum.

* * *

By the evening, of course, they were due another Mitchell row. Paul didn’t see it coming, but in hindsight it seemed inevitable. Storms were part of the whole sea metaphor.

He and Ben had spent the evening at the park, this warm Wednesday, eating baked potatoes and celebrating the fact that Belinda hadn’t laughed Paul out of the door. Apparently, if he could do enough with Elysium’s social media to make her need a second stylist, he’d have the hours when his arm was healed.

It wasn’t much, but Paul now at least had something to do tomorrow, since he’d be going by to fuss with Belinda’s laptop. He and Jenny had spent half the afternoon talking about viral marketing, because apparently she’d done a bit of that as well in her time, so he was feeling almost clued up.

The kitchen window was open at the Mitchell house, so when he and Ben came home to the back door Phil and Sharon’s voices were more than audible. They were in the middle of a conversation, and were talking with about as much self-consciousness as they ever did, which was none.

“…long he’ll stay?” Sharon was asking, sounding exasperated. “You put up with Abi for months.”

It dug into the gut of him, Paul found, the disappointment. The embarrassment too, though both them were a surprise. His ears were burning; everything tingled with shame – because they didn’t want him, did they?

The only reassuring thing was that the sound of it seemed to hit Ben as well, because he brought them to an abrupt halt on the path, just inside from the closing gate.

“That was different,” Phil was telling Sharon dismissively, his voice warmer when he was talking to her. Even so, it – it _hurt_. And that was despite the fact Paul had sworn to himself he wouldn’t get attached to the man, nor any of these other Mitchells.

Ben’s grip was tight, clutching his hand, and Paul caught a glimpse of his expression before he could force himself to look away. He did not look happy.

It seemed that Sharon wasn’t either, which was some small mercy. “And how was it _different_?” she asked coldly.

And after a moment, Phil scoffed, and then he was saying, “I didn’t…” He didn’t sound particularly convincing. “I meant things are different now. Things have happened. Ben needs to focus on his family.”

_Suppose he didn’t mean it that day in the pub after all…_

Sharon didn’t seem to be taking Phil seriously, though. She mocked him, “You need Ben to yourself, you mean.”

There was silence, then, and when Paul looked Ben was still clenching his jaw, murder in his eyes. What was there to say, Paul wondered. He knew Phil was fickle – he’d seen it with Ben time and time again – but it still hurt to realise that he wasn’t getting any closer to the Phil Mitchell Christmas card list. Which was stupid.

But then again, maybe this was the lie, and there was a reason for him to feel hurt. It was hard to tell.

Eventually, it was Sharon who sighed, still inside the house and coming into view of the window as she sat at the table and brought her hand to her forehead. “If you want his support,” she said, looking towards the hallway, “you’re going to have to tell him you need it.” Her voice carried with the sound of the cooling cooker out into the warm summer air.

“Come on,” Paul muttered to Ben, pulling on Ben’s hand to bring them a little further up the path. They couldn’t stand around eavesdropping all night, and the sooner they arrived home the sooner it could be decided who out of them and grown-ups was sitting in the kitchen and who was sitting in the living room.

Ben’s expression was still more than clouded, but after a couple of seconds he relented, taking another step up the path.

Unfortunately, that was when Phil decided to start talking again. “Ben knows where he’s needed,” he said.

Frustrated, Sharon replied immediately, and the moment to intrude passed. “He’s a young man, Phil,” she protested. “You can’t expect him…” Rubbing her forehead again, she sighed. “He’s always had Jay at the Arches, hasn’t he? And with everything that’s happened you can see how much he relies on –“

“This one?” Phil said, and Paul recognised his own very favourite nickname. He almost lost his nerve, but he crushed down his upset this time and _listened_. “And where was he when they was jumped?” Phil demanded, and he didn’t sound angry; he sounded almost afraid. “No,” he said, and he was talking to himself. “He’s _my_ son and he don’t need that piece of scum mate of his and he don’t need to be going round with some soft touch who can’t look after himself.”

“Now you’re being ridiculous!” was what Sharon started to shout back. Paul was focused on reading between the lines, because mostly, now, Phil was reminding him of Ben when he’d go on one of his rants about how they couldn’t be together. That would all be far too easy, though; there was no way Phil was getting attached to him. Though it almost would explain his anger with Jay…

In any case, though, Ben was not the sort of person to read between the lines, so there wasn't any time to think about it. “I’ve had enough of this,” he was fuming before Paul could stop him, more than loud enough for everyone inside the house to hear. By Sharon’s startled leap to her feet, they had. “Let’s go,” he added, pulling them both around.

“Go?” Paul asked, trying to follow this particular train of thought. They’d already been out. “Go where?”

“Ben!” And then Phil was yanking the back door open, setting himself in near-silhouette against the dim kitchen light. Paul let go of Ben’s hand, wondering if it was too late to throw himself into the hedge. “Where’re you going?”

“Out,” Ben replied sharply, wheeling back on his dad and throwing a pointed finger to the back gate. “I can’t stand the thought of sticking around here and listening to your…” He shook his head, face all screwed up, even more steaming angry, maybe, than Paul had anticipated. “You don’t get a say in who I’m with, all right? You _don’t get a say_.”

Just to slam the point home – because he was Ben, after all – he grabbed Paul’s hand in his again, holding it up to his dad. It was only at that moment Paul realised it was possible to feel _more_ self-conscious than the time back in the pub.

It was kind of exhilarating. The look on Phil’s face; the way everything stopped. The thing was just… Like any roller coaster, Paul really wanted the opportunity to scream the feeling out of him.

“Me and Paul,” Ben continued, and Paul pleaded with everything that was holy that what came out of his mouth next would be clean, “we’re going out.” _Thank God._ “We’re going to keep going out, and – and Jay’s coming with us,” he added, like he’d just thought of it. _OK…_ “And I don’t _care_ if I get beaten up again. Or five thousand more times. I don’t _care_ ,” he spat, “if I get beaten to pulp every night for the rest of my _life_.” He was squeezing Paul’s hand even more tightly now. “This is it,” he said.

Sharon met Paul’s eyes, throwing him a grin as if to ask if he’d known what he was letting himself in for. And he had – of course he had, sort of – but it turned out that, no matter what he’d thought before, _now_ was the most self-conscious he’d ever felt in his whole life.

It seemed fair to say that Phil was only about as good as Ben was at reading between the lines, so all he heard was Ben willing himself to get beaten up. Paul was trying not to take that part seriously, because it wasn’t worth it. Or, he liked to have the faith in humanity that let him think it wasn’t.

Framed by the kitchen light, though, Ben’s dad was stood in the doorway and looked an even sicker colour than usual. “Ben,” was all he said, at a loss.

Paul felt sorry for him, but he was being dragged along, the moment Ben decided they were storming off. “Come on.”

 _Well…_ Paul thought to himself as he spun on his heels, followed behind. What was there to say? It wasn’t exactly how he would have scripted Ben’s coming-out speech, but it probably was about time he’d come up with one.

He just hoped they had somewhere to sleep at the end of the night.

* * *

The conversation with Jay didn’t take long. Honey had seen them through the door, so with a shout for Jay he was the one who answered, looming in the poky little hallway.

“Get your coat,” was all Ben said, the mood still pouring off him. “We’re going out.”

Jay was looking – oddly well-dressed, considering it was a weeknight. He wasn’t wearing any grey jersey at all, and had a dark blue shirt on as well as some expensive-looking jeans. As ever, he smelled like the uncomplicatedly masculine end of a high street chemist's, but he was definitely modelling the sharper side of the Phil Mitchell boutique, and Paul reckoned he would’ve given him a second look.

Glancing at Paul in acknowledgement – though probably not of what Paul was thinking – Jay focused on Ben. “Nice to see you too,” he mocked. “And you should’ve rung, because I can’t, can I?”

“Why not?” Ben demanded. It was only then that he seemed to clock that Jay was dressed to go out. He looked him up and down, and it was like he felt betrayed. “Where you going?”

Shaking his head, Jay tutted like a mother hen. “You know I got other mates besides you two,” he said, though he was looking over their heads, so Paul wasn’t particularly convinced.

Completely ignoring all hints to shut up and leave it, of course, Ben ploughed on. “Like who?” he demanded.

Jay was just left with buffing his nails on his other palm, huffing a breath out of his mouth and looking even more antsy than Paul usually expected him to be. Something was off, and that only became clearer when he snapped, “Well, that ain’t none of your business, is it? And I don’t fancy spending my evening playing the spare part on your little date, all right? So why don’t you leave it out?”

It was hard not to be taken aback. Ben glanced at Paul, looking hurt, but Paul didn’t know what to say that wouldn’t antagonise Jay further. He shrugged.

As the silence hung, then, Billy Mitchell appeared in the hallway behind Jay’s head. “Oh, hello, Ben,” he said, nodding. “Paul.” He looked between them awkwardly, gambolling on as though there was something he wasn’t saying. “Taking Jay out, are you? He’s been hoping to see you all week.” His gaze fixed on Paul for a moment, and it seemed to take him off course, “And – and I don’t mean to interfere, yeah? But Pam and Les are really missing you as well.”

Paul opened his mouth to respond, because this wasn’t really what they’d come round about…

But then Billy was practically pushing Jay out of the door. “Well, go on then,” he said, apparently back on whatever mad track it was. “You ain’t been out with your mates in ages.”

Jay was fuming. He was having to unclench his fists, it seemed to Paul, and his jaw he couldn’t manage at all. “I just told them, Billy, I ain’t sitting around…”

“You won’t have to,” Paul then interrupted, spontaneously. He wasn’t sure why, but it seemed like _something_ was going on, and Billy was all right. If he wanted Jay going out with them, then it had to be the best option. “You’ll, um…” He racked his brains, trying to think of a way around this. “Well, I don’t know if I can drink yet, anyway,” he said, glancing at Ben for help.

Ben just looked confused. _Cheers, Ben._

“And…” Paul added. “And you’ll, um…” He looked at Jay, his smart clothes, and thought about what it had to be like, to be part of the sea of Mitchells and then be cast out to the periphery. He had to be lonely; was there no one… “You’ll have someone else to talk to,” Paul said, before he could think better of it.

“Someone – else,” Jay echoed, sounding sceptical. He wasn’t dismissing the idea out of hand, though, Paul noticed.

Ben of course echoed him. “Someone else?” he asked, sounding even more sceptical.

“Yeah,” Paul replied, meeting Billy’s hopeful eyes and shrugging. He had an idea, then, and it was absolutely mad. Mad – and potentially horrific – but he hadn’t been raised to avoid conflict. What was life on Albert Square if not a little mad, anyway? “We’re picking them up on the way to the bus.”

Still looking confused, Ben nonetheless shrugged, as though he was happy to decide what he thought later. He shot an angrier look at Jay. “Well, go on then,” he said. “We ain’t got all night.”

There were a few seconds when Paul thought Jay wasn’t going to go for it. In the end, though, looking between them and Billy and the door frame, he sighed to himself, and ducked back inside the house for his wallet. Billy followed him.

“So, who’s the mystery guest,” Ben asked when they were alone, leaning over on the doorstep.

Paul itched the back of his neck, hoping that somehow this wasn’t a terrible idea. “You’re not gonna like it…”

* * *

“This is the worst idea you ever had,” Ben was saying later, as they made their way up the doorsteps.

Jay seemed to agree with him, though neither of them wasn’t following. “ _This_ is your plan?” he asked, still sounding on edge. “I might as well have stayed in…”

“It’s all in the spirit of moving on from drama,” Paul told them, trying to sound more confident than he felt as he rang the bell. But really, what else was there for it? He was feeling better; Ben had had a row with his dad that would hopefully be over by the time they came home, else they’d be sleeping rough tonight; Jay was acting like something was going on where he needed some mates. Paul – he liked to have the air nice and clear, and now that he thought about it this had been nagging at him for ages.

After the bell, it was only a couple of moments before there was the sound of someone running down the stairs, and then the door of Dot Branning’s house was opening wide to reveal one bright-eyed Miss Abi, who was still wearing her polo shirt from the vet’s.

“Oh,” she said at the sight of them, like she had no idea how to react. “It’s you.”

“We’re going out,” Paul said, because he had a policy of acting cool. He looked round to check that Ben and Jay had the requisite awkward grins on their faces. “Burying a whole shedload of hatchets. Wanna come?”

Abi bounced against the door, and Paul wondered when it was that he’d learned to read her like a book. Not that he’d seen through the whole baby thing, of course, but it was obvious that all she wanted was some company. “This is a joke, ain’t it?”

“No, not a joke…” Paul began, looking at the other two again. They were the ones who were actually her mates.

Thankfully, whatever was going on, Jay wasn’t let his social skills completely lapse. “You’d be keeping me company, Abs,” he said, catching on quick. He waved a quick hand between Paul and Ben. “So I ain’t left on me own with, er, these two…” He trailed off, probably realising this wasn’t the best way to sell the evening.

But Abi just shrugged, blinking her eyes once and raising her chin like she was the ice queen. “And you think that’s where I fit in, do you? Saving you from playing gooseberry while these two neck each other?” She glared at Ben. “Yeah; Rhiannon from the clinic saw you two down the cinema, less than a week after I binned your picture… Thanks for that, _Ben_.”

Paul cringed, while Ben just coughed, ducking his head. Thinking back, Paul wasn’t entirely certain of how much of that film they’d seen, if it was the first time they’d gone. They might have got through the opening credits…?

“And that’s why I need the company,” Jay said simply, nonetheless.

Despite herself, Abi looked torn, glancing between him and Ben and back to Paul again with some sort of hope in her eyes.

“You are wanted,” Paul said, at a loss for what else to say as he tried to look friendly, rather than embarrassed. He had stolen the girl’s boyfriend, after all. Although she’d sort of stolen him back by bypassing their break-up dinner, so maybe that all evened out?

Still frowning, Abi bit her lip and fiddled with her ponytail. “Where… Where are you going anyway?” she asked. “I dunno if I’ve got anything to change…”

And then, with his arms crossed and staring abjectly at Abi’s neck, Ben groaned and bit out, “Just put on that floaty thing with the birds scrawled on it." He rolled his eyes. "Get your boots and the rest of you’s done.”

Abi looked startled; Paul knew he _was_ startled – but Jay just snorted, and then Abi was leaving the door ajar as she turned around to dash back up the stairs.

“What was that about?” Jay asked, saying what Paul was thinking with about as much blatant amusement.

Ben acted like he had no idea what Jay meant. “What?” he replied defensively.

“Er, the wardrobe tips?” Jay pointed out.

“She don’t never know what to wear,” Ben defended himself, flaring up. “Does my head in. Or _did,_ anyway,” he added, glancing at Paul. It was a moment to feel insecure, but Paul was too busy feeling amused. It was interesting to know what stuck. “She ain’t got that many clothes,” Ben finished under his breath, looking down.

“I dunno what to make of you sometimes,” was what Jay said, sounding entertained. Paul even dared hope he was sounding less on edge. “It’s gonna turn out you was a better boyfriend than I were. Even after the cheating and the public humiliation.”

“Shut up,” Ben replied, though Paul could tell he was already in a better mood.

* * *

It felt good to be on the bus. It felt good to be out at all, really, even if Paul had a feeling he was going to end up the designated sensible one who got them back before the timetable stopped.

It felt good enough, actually, that Paul was willing to open up the texts his nan had sent him. Somehow, she’d got his new number – presumably from MateGate – so they'd been coming in fairly frequently.

All the messages were on a theme. Was he OK? Did he know how much they missed him? Was he coming home today? She was sorry for never telling him, it seemed, but it didn’t look like she was sorry for having done any of it in the first place.

Reading through the lot of them, Paul wanted nothing more than to respond. The last week, though, had trained him into a full-on WiFi parasite, so the lack of connection on the bus held his thumb back from tapping the reply box.

He tried to think it through. What was he going to say? He missed her and granddad just as badly? That he still felt betrayed? That he didn't know what to do with Jenny, now it turned out she was nice? Nervy, but… Paul didn’t really know how he felt about any of it, actually, so he had no idea what to say. And he could hardly go home when that was still the case.

“Anything interesting?” Ben asked him, as they pulled out of the next stop.

“Hmm?” Paul replied, looking up. He didn’t want to talk about it, he knew; he’d only say something he regretted.

Ben raised his eyebrows, because he clearly knew. “On the phone,” he said, giving Paul an opening.

“Oh,” Paul dismissed, looking away into the aisle. “No. Just my nan again…”

Reaching out, Ben squeezed his leg, just above the knee. It was a new gesture of affection from him, and it was enough, really.

The bus was full for past rush hour. While Paul watched, some woman with her shopping was still making her way down past them, trying to find a seat. Jay and Abi were further up, facing into the aisle and chatting away like they were on a school trip. Sat between Paul and all of them, Ben looked like a sulky child being taken to the shops, though his expression was far too compassionate.

After a few moments, he sighed, turning his knees in. Paul leaned back, edging round on his seat so he could lean into the corner between himself and the window. “You know can forgive her, right?” Ben said earnestly, ignoring all the signals that they weren’t going to talk about it. “You can forgive her, and still have your mum back. There ain’t rules.”

People behind them were standing up; one of them laughing uproariously into her mobile. Paul glanced at them, not able to immediately meet Ben’s eyes. “And what does that make me?” he asked, because he hadn’t even thought about it like that. This was partly Jenny’s betrayal he’d been nursing, wasn’t it? “An even bigger mug than I was before?”

“You know what it makes you,” Ben replied, nudging their knees together. Paul looked down, smiling despite himself. “Better than the rest of us.”

There was a smile on Ben’s face, and he was tonguing one of his teeth. The rest of his expression was warm and it made Paul basically want to find out what would happen if they kissed on the bus.

He should have done it – he decided later that he should have done it – but instead Paul just settled for taking his boyfriend’s hand, where it rested in the gap between them. The _Ben_ on his own ring finger was coming up clearer these days, as the scratches and the scabs healed around it. There was just his hand now, holding Ben’s, a hardcore little scar forming across his two central knuckles, where a bit of glass from the road or something had got in, and otherwise that small, swirling tag to remind him why it was there.

“That what you’d do, is it?” Paul asked the man himself, because he thought it would be funny to hear what he’d say. “Forgive and forget?”

“Course not,” Ben replied. He rolled his eyes. “Don’t really do forgiveness in my family – but,” he explained, “some stuff’s bigger than bearing grudges, yeah? You can’t carry it all with you forever.”

“Guess that’s something to do while you three are drinking,” Paul replied, looking at their hands again. Where did Ben get this stuff from? That’s what he wanted to know. “Work on letting go.”

“Or you could ignore it for tonight and have a good time,” Ben suggested.

Paul laughed. _Yeah._ That was always an option.

* * *

A few drinks in, of course, and they were all just hashing it all out. Peckham was heaving – mostly with hipsters – but they’d found themselves at the back of a slightly tatty bar, where the beer was less than four quid. The shots weren’t too expensive either.

They were by the loos and you could almost smell it, but the lighting was low and the walls were a nice forest green. In a nod to the modern world there was a factory lamp hung over the table for two they were huddled around; Paul was on the bench with Ben against the wall, while Jay and Abi were both perched on stools. The 1975 were pumping through the speakers and it could have been worse.

“The thing is,” Abi said with finality, wiping her mouth with her hand as she put her drink down on the table. “I weren’t faithful to you neither, so it ain’t like I can complain.”

Ben had his hand on Paul’s knee, not really under the table, so it was obvious when he started shaking with laughter. “What?” he asked, when he’d finished his swallow of beer, like this was all a juicy story that had happened to some other people. “When?”

Abi’s eyes were bright, and she leaned forward like she’d been wanting to tell this story for ages – but also a bit like she’d had practice. “It was one of Babe’s mad plans,” she explained. “I needed to get pregnant, and _you’d_ come home with an STI.” She pointed a finger at Ben, who at least had the grace to look a little bit ashamed.

Paul shared a look with Jay, who shook his head as if to wash his hands of that particular episode.

“So I,” the story continued as the chorus jangled in, “sweet, gullible Abi, what do I do? Obviously,” she laughed at herself, “I get tanked up on vodka and pull some random behind the Vic.”

Ben guffawed again, and suddenly there rose in the back of Paul’s memory an image of Abi, dressed in slightly too many metallics, stumbling over an orange juice and slamming her hand on the bar. He’d thought it was strange at the time, but… “Hang on,” he said, peering at Abi over the table and recognising exactly the same glossy, drunk expression on her face. This was ridiculous. “That was my birthday party.”

At Paul’s side, Ben apparently couldn’t take it anymore and burst out with a huge laugh, clutching Paul’s leg and the drink in his hand for dear life. Abi caught his eye and then she was laughing too, just a bit, while Jay was smirking through his frown, still shaking his head.

The thing was, Paul wasn’t entirely sure it was _funny_. His heart had been in bits for months, since well before that birthday. And yet these two had apparently spent their time in competition to figure out who could make a bigger sham of their relationship.

It had been his idea, of course bringing Abi out. He was supposed to be the bigger person. He didn’t feel like it, about then.

“It didn’t work, anyway,” Abi said, as if that was an apology. She was actually looking at Ben with affection now, and Paul was surprised to realise that he couldn’t say he’d ever seen it before. “Neither of us could stand up proper.” Ben was nodding, as though he knew that particular MO. “And at the same time it was still easier than it ever was with you.”

Ben snorted, holding up his pint. “Yeah,” he agreed cynically, taking a drink. “Sounds about right.”

Paul sunk lower and lower against the wall, barely able to keep himself from covering his face with his hands. The whole business was so sad, to his eyes. “You know I was actually happy for you two?” he said, resenting it and remembering the dark, unloving feelings he did get about Ben from time to time.

The pair of them looked at him, both of them with kind expressions on their faces. “I know you was,” they both said, at pretty much the same time. Ben moved his arm to draw him into a hug, which Paul just about accepted, while Abi frowned sadly.

“Believe me,” Jay said, looking equally grim against the darkness behind him. There was a poster in a frame on the wall behind him, telling them all to _FEEL NO FEAR_. “You wouldn’t have been if you’d lived in that house with them.”

“Yeah,” Abi agreed more soberly, sitting on her hands. “And Lee Carter gave Whitney chlamydia, so it’s all been a right barrel of laughs.”

They all looked at her, and it wasn’t clear to Paul which part of that sentence they were supposed to deal with first.

“Lee Carter?” Ben asked, picking one. He leaned forward, letting Paul out of their hug to clasp their hands together instead. He laughed just a little, like he was trying to get back the feeling he’d had before. “You’re saying Lee Carter’s the random?”

“Don’t even ask,” Abi replied, rolling her eyes and looking like she couldn’t believe it. “We were so wasted, and now…”

“This gets worse and worse,” Jay muttered, still drinking his beer. Paul squeezed his eyes shut.

“I was so lonely,” Abi defended herself. From the way she said it, it was pretty clear she still felt lonely now. “I only had Babe to talk to, and she’s… D’you know what it’s like going round pretending that everything's…” Paul shared a look with Ben, and wondered if this was actually a joke. But Abi just kept going, picking up her wine again and watching Ben as he shrank towards Paul’s shoulder, “Pretending you don’t see things what are right there, staring you in the face?”

“Abi…” Jay said carefully, drawing her attention.

“I just wanted to be part of something,” she insisted, sounding a little tearful, even as the track changed to a different beat. “Ain’t you noticed that ex-boyfriends are all I got left?”

“We’re your mates first, Abi,” Jay said, putting his beer down. “And Paul’s on your side and all.” _Thanks, Jay,_ Paul thought. “It were his idea to bring you.”

“Can we go back to laughing at it?” Ben interrupted the moment, sitting up. Paul frowned at him, but from the expressions on Jay and Abi’s faces they were feeling the same way.

Paul knew he could be too serious about things. He knew it wasn’t always worth it. At the same time, he couldn’t believe that that the three people around him were actually callous enough to joke about all the pain that had been caused in the past year. Surely they couldn’t be feeling so callous about their own?

It seemed he was right. As one of the bar staff came to collect their glasses, not one of the Mitchell house massive seemed able to think of anything to say. It was possible they were doing the same thing Paul was: going over the memories and trying to come up with one that was more absurd than gutting. They were all a lot less sober than Paul was; it was probably even harder.

“I think it’s another orange juice for the invalid,” Paul decided, letting go of Ben’s hand and standing up to distract himself. “Anyone want a beer or something?”

Both Abi and Jay shook their heads, nursing their thoughts, but Ben stood up beside him and started ushering them to the bar. “I’ll help you,” he said, like he just wanted to forget.

* * *

On the bus home, they were wasted. At least, the other three were. Paul was just tired. Even so, he didn’t remember much of the journey back to Walford. What he did remember – and what he realised later he must have spent most of his time doing – was pressing his face to the window so he could see the traffic, all the while Ben slumped against the back of him, playing on his phone.

It was a clear night, and as they crossed over the river the water glittered like it was reflecting the stars, not just the ambient light of the city.

Paul wondered if everyone felt the way he did sometimes, as though they were the only one in the world telling the truth, while everyone else pretended to be something they weren’t. He wondered whether _he_ was the one pretending. He wanted to be good – to be kind – but sometimes he couldn’t tell whether he wasn’t just a sanctimonious know-it-all, nursing his resentments like it made him better than everybody else.

How much stuff had Phil thrown at Ben over the years? And he never left. He always went back, just like they were without question going back now. So what one earth was Paul doing, staying away from his family?

He didn’t know what it meant, either, that he was sitting here on this bus with Ben, who had barely any inhibitions left, and instead of feeling glad, he felt a little – scared about what would happen, if they touched any more than they were doing, or how they had been in the bar.

They were only a few streets away from the Square when Paul’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out, laughing to realise that Ben must have been texting him from the bridge, tapping and tapping and tapping. The laugh died a little when he realised what it was about.

The thing was all one long screed, and it probably shouldn’t have gone through. As it was, the spelling made it mostly nonsense. At the same time, it also seemed to be Ben’s confession of guilt over what had gone on between him and Abi – and, as a result, him and Paul. It was all a little belated.

 _I don’t know if forgiveness is real,_ it said towards the end, just about. _Maybe the only thing you can do is forget, forget, forget…_

It was time for their stop; Paul was the one who pressed the button.

As they fell off the bus, Jay and Abi staggered off into the night, but Paul caught Ben by the shoulder, wrapping his good arm around him. He ducked his head down as the bus drove off, and told Ben in his good ear, “I don’t want to forget.” That seemed important somehow; the most important thing. “All right? Whatever happens; whatever we… I want us to remember it all, everything we’ve been through. And I want things to be better, with all my family and yours.”

And he was tired, Paul. He was really starting to feel tired. As they started walking, it wasn’t entirely clear which one of them was holding the other up.

At the same time, he clocked how Ben was smiling, like he’d won. And it was that same feeling Paul had when he broke into a grin himself.

.


End file.
